fcibrarjp  of  Che  Cheolo^icd 

PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 


^VVV 

FROM  THE  LIBRARY  OF  THE 
REVEREND  JESSE  HALSEY,  D.D. 

BR  759  .P6  1923 

Porritt,  Arthur,  1872-1947. 

The  best  I  remember 


The  Best  I  Remember 


Arthur  Porritt 

(of  The  Christian  World) 
Author  of  “The  Strategy  of  Life” 


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A  man  is  about  as  happy  as  he 
makes  up  his  mind  to  be.” 

Abraham  Lincoln. 


George  H.  Doran  Company 


Printed  in  Great  Britain, 


THE  BEST  I  REMEMBER 


TO  MY  WIFE 


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Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

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in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


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https://archive.org/details/bestiremember00porr_0 


PREFACE 


book  was  never  deliberately  designed.  Its  genesis 
was  the  possession,  close  at  my  hand,  of  a  capacious 
notebook  at  a  moment  when,  in  ill  health  and  weariness 
of  spirit,  I  needed  an  indoor  recreation  to  “lay  a  ghost.” 
My  first  thought  was  to  jot  down  a  few  random  recollec¬ 
tions  of  the  best  things  I  could  remember,  but  the  jottings 
grew — as  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling  says  his  first  poems  grew 
— unmanneredly,  till  the  first  capacious  notebook  was  filled, 
while  memories  stored  up  during  thirty-three  years  of 
London  journalism — especially  religious  journalism — still 
crowded  in.  Other  capacious  notebooks  followed  and 
were  filled.  Then  it  seemed  possible  that  these  reminis¬ 
cences,  so  artlessly  garnered,  might  be  made  into  a  book 
to  be  published  in  all  modesty,  and  not  without  a  sense 
of  dread  lest  aught  written  here  might  be  thought  to  have 
been  set  down  in  malice.  It  is  the  nature  of  recollections 
to  be  indiscreet;  but  indiscretions  may  be  neither  malicious 
nor  mischievous,  especially  if  they  concern  things  said 
and  done  in  years  that  have  passed  into  history.  I  cherish 
a  hope  that  I  have  no  enemies  (since  there  is  no  man  I 
regard  as  my  enemy),  and  devoutly  I  wish  that  this  book 
shall  make  me  none. 


A.  P. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

PAGE 

I.  C.  H.  Spurgeon  and  S.  A.  Tipple 

I 

2.  Journalism  in  1890  ..... 

7 

3.  Politics  and  Politicians  .... 

16 

4.  Religion  in  Politics  ..... 

.  24 

5.  Collaborating  with  W.  G.  Grace 

•  31 

6.  Introduction  to  Religious  Journalism 

.  36 

7.  Dr.  Guinness  Rogers  .... 

.  42 

8.  C.  Silvester  Horne  ..... 

.  49 

9.  W.  T.  Stead  and  Hugh  Price  Hughes 

•  57 

10.  Dr.  Parker  ...... 

.  66 

II.  Newman  Hall,  McLaren,  Berry 

•  73 

12.  J.  G.  Stevenson  and  Dan  Crawford 

79 

13.  The  Humours  of  Pageantry 

.  85 

14.  Dr.  Clifford  ...... 

.  91 

15.  Mr.  Lloyd  George  ..... 

•  95 

16.  Dr.  Jowett  ...... 

.  100 

17.  Dr.  Orchard  and  Others 

.  105 

18.  A  Polyglot  and  Some  Editors  . 

.  114 

19.  Dr.  R.  J.  Campbell  .... 

• 

H 

M 

0 

20.  Dr.  Forsyth 

,  128 

IX 


X 


Contents 


CHAPTER  page 

21.  Women  in  Journalism  .....  i33 

22.  Some  Contrasts  and  a  Moral  .  .  .  -139 

23.  Great  Missionaries  ......  i45 

24.  America  and  American  Humour  .  .  .151 

25.  A  Satirist  in  the  Pulpit  ....  158 

26.  A  Miscellany  of  Memories  ....  164 

27.  “  The  Process  of  the  Suns  .  .  .  .  171 

28.  A  Pre-Raphaelite  Evangelical  ....  177 

29.  Dr.  Fairbairn  and  Others  ....  181 

30.  Ways  and  Vagaries  of  Preachers  .  .  .188 

31.  Chance  Meetings  .  .  .  .  .  .193 

32.  Journalistic  Confrtos  .....  199 

33.  Evangelists — Good  and  Bad  ....  205 

34.  Ministerial  Humorists  .  .  .  .  .210 

35.  Random  Recollections  .....  218 

36.  A  Great  Organizer  ......  222 

37.  The  Decay  of  Dissent  .  .  .  .  .225 

38.  Disillusionment s  ......  230 

39.  London’s  Spell  ......  237 

40.  Tumult  and  Peace  ......  242 

Index  ........  247 


The  Best  I  Remember 


CHAPTER  I 

C.  H.  SPURGEON  AND  S.  A.  TIPPLE 

y  OOKING  back  it  is  odd  to  recall — it  was  prophetic, 
-L'  perhaps,  of  my  thirty  years  in  religious  journalism 
— that  my  first  assignment  as  a  daily  newspaper  journalist 
in  London  was  to  hear  Charles  H.  Spurgeon  preach  at 
the  Metropolitan  Tabernacle.  I  was  sent  to  get  a  London 
Letter  paragraph  for  the  Manchester  Examiner  about  the 
Baptist  preacher’s  return  to  his  pulpit  on  the  first  vSunday 
in  February,  1890,  after  one  of  his  winter  visits  to  the 
south  of  France.  My  instructions  were  explicit.  “If 
Spurgeon  preaches  just  a  gospel  sermon,  there  is  no  copy 
in  it.  If  he  says  anything  about  himself,  that  may  make 
a  good  paragraph ;  if  he  says  anything  about  current  ques¬ 
tions,  give  it  us  in  full.”  I  arrived  at  the  Tabernacle  very 
early — having  made  the  journey  across  London  from 
Upper  Holloway  by  a  horse-drawn  omnibus — for  there 
were  no  Tubes  in  those  days.  On  the  steps  outside  the 
door  of  the  Tabernacle  a  man  wearing  a  very  long  frock- 
coat  held  out  a  collection-box,  and  gave  me  to  understand 
that  in  return  for  a  contribution  I  should  receive  an  ad¬ 
mission  ticket  for  the  service.  I  duly  paid  toll  in  silver, 
and  entered  the  building,  to  find  it  already  crowded.  I 
recall  thinking  that  I  had  never  seen  a  building  with 
quite  so  ugly  an  interior,  and  then  I  remember  thinking 
later  that  I  had  never  been  in  any  building  in  which 


2 


The  Best  I  Remember 


(though  I  was  badly  placed)  I  could  hear  so  well.  After¬ 
wards  I  made  the  discovery  that  it  was  not  due  to  any 
peculiar  acoustical  virtue  of  the  Tabernacle  that  I  heard 
so  perfectly — it  was  due  to  Spurgeon’s  wonderful  voice. 
I  remember  nothing  of  that  first  hearing  of  Spurgeon 
beyond  the  loveliness  of  his  voice.  He  preached  a  purely 
gospel  sermon  which,  I  fear,  made  no  deep  impression 
upon  me  at  the  time,  and  he  made  no  reference  to  himself, 
or  to  current  questions.  So  I  went  away  disappointed 
at  the  sorry  yield  of  “copy.”  I  had  not  then  learned  the 
journalistic  trick  of  making  bricks  without  straw.  The 
fact  that  Spurgeon,  of  whose  magical  powers  I  had  heard 
from  childhood,  had  no  spell  for  me  when  I  first  heard 
him,  rather  concerned  me  at  the  time.  Later  I  discovered 
that  this  was  not  an  uncommon  experience,  though  per¬ 
haps  few  first  hearers  of  Spurgeon  dismissed  his  preach¬ 
ing,  as  George  Eliot  did,  as  a  “most  superficial  grocer’s 
back-parlour  view  of  Calvinistic  Christianity.”  Still  I 
cannot  honestly  say  that  when,  on  subsequent  occasions, 
I  heard  Spurgeon,  I  ever  felt,  as  perhaps  I  ought  to  have 
done,  the  magic  spell  of  the  great  preacher.  But  always 
that  wondrous  voice,  which  was  like  nothing  I  have  ever 
heard  in  any  public  speaker,  charmed  my  ears.  Spurgeon’s 
hard  Calvinistic  theology  repelled  me,  and  his  almost 
fierce  joy  in  picturing  a  literal  hell  made  me  rebellious. 

I  often  wonder  whether  Spurgeon’s  strangle-hold  on 
Victorian  evangelicalism  was  not  due  to  his  power  to 
terrorize  his  hearers  by  the  sheer  exuberance  with  which 
he  dangled  the  unrepentant  over  the  bottomless  pit.  I 
am  certainly  convinced  that  the  disappearance  of  hell  from 
modern  theology  explains  some  of  the  lost  grip  of  the 
churches  upon  the  people.  Spurgeon’s  gospel  was  based 
on  the  fear  of  God;  and  the  fear  of  God  seems  to  have 
passed  from  men’s  minds  to  haunt  them  no  more.  Possibly 
the  modern  milder  conception  of  God  is  not  wholly  a  gain. 
A  young  ministerial  acquaintance  of  mine  who,  in  his 


C.  H.  Spurgeon  and  S.  A.  Tipple  3 

preaching  over-emphasized  the  benevolence  of  God  and 
under-emphasized  His  righteousness,  was  admonished  by 
an  old  Northumbrian  miner  in  his  church  for  omitting  the 
element  of  fear  from  his  gospel.  “Mr.  Roberts,”  he  said, 
“you  can  take  it  from  an  old  man  with  a  long  religious 
experience  that  a  theology  without  a  hell  is  not  worth  a 
damn.”  Before  he  died  Dr.  R.  W.  Dale  sighed  and  said 
sadly  to  a  friend,  “No  one  fears  God  nowadays.”  The 
elimination  of  fear  from  preaching  has,  I  feel  sure,  been 
a  tremendous  factor  in  the  decline  of  church-going.  There 
are  people  whom  only  fear  moves — ^^they  do  not  under-, 
stand  love  as  a  motive  power.  But  now,  just  when  the 
theologians  have  nicely  reconstructed  their  theology  with 
hell  jettisoned,  the  spiritualists  are  reviving  the  old 
doctrine.  I  have  heard  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  express  his 
belief  that  the  personality  of  the  selfish  and  evil  will 
persist  after  physical  death,  but  will  exist  in  a  state  of 
isolation  and  ostracism  in  the  Great  Beyond.  Could 
Spurgeon’s  literal  hell  be  worse? 

Whether  Mr.  Spurgeon  would  command  large  con¬ 
gregations  if  he  were  preaching  now  is  a  question  I 
constantly  hear  discussed.  My  own  opinion  is  that  he 
certainly  would.  With  all  the  decline  of  the  habit  and 
the  decay  of  the  sense  of  the  duty  of  church-going,  a  really 
great  preacher — whatever  his  theology,  be  it  broad  or 
narrow,  modernist  or  obscurantist — is  sure  of  a  congrega¬ 
tion.  Thirty  years  of  observation  as  a  Free  Church 
journalist  leaves  me  without  a  doubt  that  really  fine  preach¬ 
ing  never  fails  to  attract  hearers.  It  may  be  true,  as  Dean 
Inge  declares,  that  we  have  almost  ceased  to  be  a  listening 
people  and  become  a  reading  people;  but  for  all  that, 
eloquent  preaching  that  does  not  insult  the  intelligence, 
that  appeals  to  the  highest  emotions,  and  that  aims  at 
strengthening  the  will  and  quickening  the  conscience,  has 
always  an  audience  awaiting  it.  The  dogmatism  of  the 
pulpit  has  lost  authority;  but  the  voice  of  the  preacher 


4 


The  Best  I  Remember 


who  can  preach  never  cries  in  the  wilderness.  The  crux 
of  the  whole  church-going  problem  is  to  find  a  full  supply 
of  preachers  who  do  not  insult  the  intelligence — men  to 
whom  educated  men  and  women,  reading  and  thinking  the 
thoughts  of  these  spacious  days,  can  listen  without  losing 
their  self-respect.  Preaching  is  not  obsolescent,  unless 
preachers  make  it  so. 

I  forget  in  what  year  it  was  that  I  paid  my  first  visit 
to  Central  Hill  Baptist  Church,  Upper  Norwood,  and 
heard  the  Rev.  Samuel  A.  Tipple.  It  was,  I  think,  on 
the  recommendation  of  Rev.  W.  Garrett  Horder  that  I 
went.  I  fell  captive  at  once  to  that  singular  man  of  genius 
— incomparably  the  greatest  preacher  I  have  ever  heard. 
Central  Hill  was  a  quaint  little  chapel  in  a  by-road  on  a 
level  with  the  roof  of  the  Crystal  Palace.  The  interior  was 
plain  to  bareness,  but  few  buildings  I  have  been  in  con¬ 
veyed  such  a  strange  sense  of  worshipfulness.  The  long 
streams  of  ivy  that  hung  swaying  in  the  breeze  outside 
the  dim  windows  somehow  contributed  to  the  reverential 
spirit  within.  Mr.  Tipple  was  a  veteran  whien  first  I  came 
under  his  spell — a  venerable  figure  with  a  long  white 
beard,  bright  little  eyes  that  flashed  like  a  sparrow-hawk’s, 
and  an  exquisitely  modulated  voice.  His  spoken  prose 
always  made  me  think  of  Wordsworth’s  poetry.  There 
was  cadence  and  sometimes  a  rhythmical  lilt  in  his 
sentences.  He  was  a  Wordsworthian  Pantheist  and  em¬ 
phasized  the  Immanence  of  God  long  before  it  got  into 
current  theology.  Literally  he  saw  sermons  in  stones, 
books  in  the  running  brooks,  and  good  in  everything. 
The  prayers  of  Mr.  Tipple  were  quite  as  remarkable  as 
his  sermons.  A  majestic  liturgy  might  be  compiled  from 
the  one  volume  of  prayers  (now,  I  fear,  out  of  print)  which 
he  published,  or  rather  allowed  to  be  published,  from 
shorthand  notes  taken  surreptitiously  by  a  lady  admirer. 
One  peculiarity  of  Mr.  Tipple  was  his  objection  to  being 
reported.  If  he  saw  anyone  in  the  congregation  taking 


C.  H.  Spurgeon  and  S.  A.  Tipple  5 

notes  he  would  stop  in  his  sermon,  and  quietly,  but  firmly, 
ask  that  the  notebook  should  be  laid  aside — otherwise,  he 
would  add,  he  could  not  go  on  preaching.  We  possess 
more  of  Mr.  Tipple’s  prayers  than  of  his  sermons  because 
he  could  not  see  the  note-taker  when  he  prayed.  His 
preaching  was  altogether  out  of  the  ordinary.  He  seemed 
to  be  thinking  aloud,  quietly  beating  out  the  music  of  his 
soul  in  public,  as  if  his  congregation  were  not  there.  But 
the  exactness  of  his  words  and  the  delicacy  of  his  phrasing, 
as  well  as  the  profundity  and  subtlety  of  his  thoughts, 
made  it  unthinkable  that  he  was  extemporizing,  and  I 
always  felt  sure  that  every  sermon  he  preached  had  cost 
him  prodigious  effort  in  the  quietude  of  his  study.  His 
perfect  pronunciation  of  words  was  delightful.  John 
Ruskin  said  he  was  the  greatest  master  of  pulpit  prose. 

In  the  days  when  I  occasionally  walked  over  to  Upper 
Norwood,  Mr.  Tipple  was  preaching  only  once  a  Sunday. 
Usually  the  service  began  about  five  minutes  past  eleven. 
It  was  timed  for  eleven  o’clock;  but  the  congregation  came 
from  all  four  quarters  of  London,  and  the  train  which 
brought  the  West  End  element  from  Victoria  was  often  a 
few  minutes  late.  Mr.  Tipple  would  sit  in  the  pulpit 
meditating  without  the  slightest  movement  until  the 
Victoria  train  contingent  streamed  in.  Then  he  would 
begin  the  service.  Central  Hill  was  scarcely  a  church  in 
the  ordinary  sense,  and  I  never  heard  Mr.  Tipple  say  a 
word  that  led  one  to  think  he  was  a  Baptist.  He  had 
a  strictly  personal  following,  composed  mainly  of  a  pro¬ 
fessional  and  well-to-do  class  of  people — and  chiefly  men 
— who  went  in  all  weathers  and  often  at  great  personal 
inconvenience  to  hear  him.  I  imagine  that  no  other 
preacher  and  no  other  church  would  have  held  their 
loyalty.  A  larger  congregation  would  probably  have 
destroyed  his  distinctive  style  of  utterance.  The  Sunday 
after  Mr.  Tipple  resigned  his  ministry,  the  Central  Hill 
congregation  had  evaporated  into  thin  air.  But  he  was 


6 


The  Best  I  Remember 


a  consummate  preacher,  a  man  of  positive  spiritual  genius, 
and  a  fearless  pursuer  of  truth  wheresoever  it  might  lead 
him.  Certainly  he  belongs  to  the  “immortal  dead”  who 
live  in  minds  made  better  by  their  presence. 

Many  years  after  Mr.  Tipple’s  death  I  listened,  Sunday 
by  Sunday,  for  a  year  to  a  preacher  cast  in  a  very  similar 
mould — Rev.  Walter  Friend,  a  Congregational  minister, 
who,  after  a  long  period  of  service  in  South  Africa,  has 
returned  to  England  to  spend  the  evening  of  his  days  under 
home  skies.  Once,  in  conversation  with  Mr.  Friend,  I 
told  him  that  I  saw  strong  resemblance  in  his  preaching 
to  that  of  my  old  idol,  S.  A.  Tipple.  “What  a  very 
strange  thing  that  you  should  say  that,”  replied  Mr. 
Friend.  “I  knew  Mr.  Tipple  very  well  in  my  younger 
days.  He  was  very  kind  to  me.  Indeed  he  asked  me  to 
be  his  co-pastor  at  Central  Hill  Church.” 


CHAPTER  II 


JOURNALISM  IN  189O 

The  Fleet  Street  into  which  I  was  plunged  in  1890  was 
not,  in  its  externals,  very  different  from  Fleet  Street  to¬ 
day.  But  in  its  essence  it  was  wholly  different.  To  a 
prosperous  journalist  Fleet  Street  presented  then  the  most 
expensive  half-mile  walk  in  England.  The  Bohemian 
tradition,  dating  from  the  days  when  Dr.  Johnson  and 
Oliver  Goldsmith  used  to  “take  a  walk  down  Fleet  Street  “ 
was  beginning  to  pass  away.  The  Press  Association  and  the 
Central  News  had  established  themselves  as  news-gather¬ 
ing  institutions,  and  the  old  penny-a-liners  who  had  lived 
— somehow — on  the  proceeds  of  odd  paragraphs  picked  up 
in  all  sorts  of  promiscuous  ways,  were  finding  their  liveli¬ 
hoods  getting  more  and  more  precarious.  A  few  of  them, 
poor  dishevelled  scallywags,  stuck  to  their  guns  and  even 
more  tenaciously  to  their  taste  for  spirits.  These  derelicts 
made  it  cheaper  fpr  a  prosperous  journalist  to  take 
a  hansom  cab  from  Temple  Bar  to  Ludgate  Circus 
rather  than  face  the  “stand  and  deliver”  kind  of  de¬ 
mands  for  “a  couple  of  shillings”  which  these  decayed 
“literary  gents”  made  upon  their  more  fortunate 
confreres. 

Phil  May,  the  Punch  artist,  who  made  a  large  income 
but  spent  it  as  it  came,  was  buttonholed  one  day  in  Fleet 
Street — so  the  story  goes — ^by  one  of  these  depressed 
spirits.  “You  haven’t  two  shillings?”  began  the  mendi¬ 
cant.  “Who  told  you  ?  ”  replied  Phil  May. 

On  another  occasion  Phil  May  listened  to  a  piteous 
story  from  an  out-of-work  reporter  who  had  lost  his  job 

B  7 


8 


The  Best  I  Remember 


through  a  quarrel  with  a  sub-editor  (a  sub-editor,  perhaps 
I  should  explain,  is  an  indoor  journalist  who  prepares 
news  “copy  ”  for  press  and,  because  he  generally  cuts  it 
down,  is  a  reporter’s  natural  enemy).  Phil  May  heard 
the  story  through,  gave  the  man  half  a  crown,  and  then 
said:  “You  should  have  knocked  the  sub-editor  down.” 
“I  did,”  was  the  reporter’s  answer.  “You  did?”  ejacu¬ 
lated  Phil  May,  with  delight  expressed  all  over  his  mobile 
face.  “Then  here’s  another  half-crown.” 

The  journalistic  unfortunate  who  levies  toll  on  his 
brethren  in  the  craft  survives,  I  suppose,  in  Fleet  Street; 
but  he  is  not  so  conspicuous  a  figure  on  the  pavement  as 
he  was  in  the  early  ’nineties.  Nor — unless  my  observa¬ 
tion  misleads  me — are  there  so  many  elderly  men  engaged 
on  newspapers  as  there  were  in  my  early  days  in  Fleet 
Street.  Journalism  is  a  young  man’s  occupation;  and  I 
imagine  that  men  who  do  not  make  good  in  “the  street 
of  adventure  ”  before  middle  age,  seize  any  opportunity 
that  occurs  to  find  a  niche  in  some  less  exacting  sphere 
of  life. 

In  recent  years  commercial  magnates,  as  well  as 
government  departments,  have  discovered  the  value  of 
publicity;  and,  realizing  that  a  well-trained  journalist  has 
protean  qualities  of  usefulness,  they  make  raids  upon 
Fleet  Street  and  carry  off  into  their  press  bureaus  a  large 
proportion  of  the  middle-aged  men  to  whom  the  glamour  of 
the  “street  ”  has  become  faded.  Again,  many  new-comers 
into  Fleet  Street  enter  journalism  to  keep  the  pot  boiling 
while  they  read  for  the  Bar.  Others  use  Fleet  Street  as  a 
not  inconvenient  thoroughfare  into  literature.  Sir  James 
Barrie,  Mr.  Percival  Gibbon,  Mr.  Eden  Philpotts,  Mr. 
Arnold  Bennett  and  Mr.  Edgar  Wallace  come  to  mind  at 
once  as  men  who,  in  the  early  ’nineties,  were  winning 
experience  as  journalists  that  they  have  since  turned 
to  good  account  as  writers  of  fiction.  Sir  John  Simon 
and  Lord  Hewart  both  courted  the  “merry  jade”  of 


Journalism  in  1890 


9 

journalism  en  route  to  the  Attorney-Generalship  and  the 
Bench. 

When  I  came  into  Fleet  Street  there  was  no  Daily  Mail, 
All  that  that  single  fact  implies  it  would  require  a  history 
of  modern  journalism  to  expound.  Without  discussing 
the  tremendous  effect  that  the  commercialization  of  the 
Press  has  had  upon  London  journalism  and  upon  English 
political  life,  I  may  say,  almost  without  a  qualification, 
that  it  has  revolutionized  the  entire  profession  of  journal¬ 
ism,  and  led  to  a  revaluation  of  all  newspaper  values. 
The  whole  process,  of  which  Mr.  Kennedy  Jones  boasted, 
of  converting  a  branch  of  literature  into  a  branch  of  com¬ 
merce  has  been  carried  out  under  my  eyes  in  Fleet  Street. 
The  leader-writer  is  now  subordinated  to  the  news  editor, 
and  the  political  expert  to  the  domestic  gossip.  But 
whoever  suggests  that  the  degeneration  of  journalism  only 
began  when  Mr.  Alfred  Harmsworth  (the  late  Lord 
Northcliffe)  started  the  Daily  Mail,  labours,  I  think,  under 
a  delusion.  The  declension  began  when  Mr.  T.  P. 
O’Connor  started  the  Star.  Up  to  that  date  the  London 
Press,  morning  and  evening  alike,  had  not  merely  pre¬ 
served  a  certain  dignity,  but  had  attempted,  with  varying 
measures  of  success,  to  serve  as  educators  of  the  people. 
The  Echo  (which  the  Star  and  the  Evening  News  killed) 
always  set  itself  seriously  to  inform  its  readers  on  the  ques¬ 
tions  of  the  day.  It  treated  politics  with  gravity  and 
reported  Parliament  honestly.  Whatever  views  might  be 
expressed  in  its  editorial  columns,  its  news  columns  con¬ 
tained  impartial  reports  from  which  readers  could  frame 
their  own  judgments.  The  Star  broke  this  tradition  under 
Mr.  T.  P.  O’Connor.  Mr.  Alfred  Harmsworth  went  one 
better  with  the  Daily  Mail,  and  the  Mail  beat  the  Star 
at  its  own  game. 

Possibly  this  revolutionary  change  in  journalism  had 
to  come.  It  arose  out  of  the  revolution  in  our  education 
system  in  the  early  ’seventies  and  the  discovery  of  the 


10 


The  Best  I  Remember 


value  of  women  readers  to  a  newspaper.  The  character  of 
our  compulsory  elementary  education  dictates  the  character 
of  our  popular  daily  Press.  With  a  higher  standard  of 
normal  education  we  shall  get,  I  imagine,  a  higher  grade 
of  seriousness  in  our  popular  newspapers.  No  one  who 
realizes  how  completely  the  last  extension  of  the  franchise 
has  placed  the  political  destinies  of  England  in  the  hands 
of  the  proletariat,  and  particularly  of  working-class  women, 
can,  I  imagine,  feel  easy  as  long  as  the  education  of  the 
working  classes  remains  on  its  present  level,  and  as  long 
as  our  popular  daily  papers  pay  such  scanty  attention  to 
the  proceedings  in  Parliament.  I  took  the  trouble  once 
to  examine  carefully  day  by  day  for  a  month  the  reports 
of  debates  in  the  House  of  Commons  in  the  columns  of 
a  London  daily  paper  that  commands  a  huge  circulation, 
and  I  was  driven  to  the  conclusion  that  a  working  man  or 
woman  who  read  that  paper  only  might  live  in  almost 
complete  ignorance  as  to  what  Parliament  is  and  does. 
If  “direct  action  ”  ever  does  become  a  reality  some  of  the 
blame  for  the  catastrophe  will  rest  upon  the  newspapers 
which,  by  ignoring,  belittling  and  disparaging  the  House 
of  Commons  (the  “Talking  shop,”  they  call  it),  have  under¬ 
mined  the  authority  of  Parliament  in  the  eyes  of  King 
Demos.  Only  the  Fisher  Education  Act  (now  whittled 
away  in  the  interests  of  economy)  justified  the  wild  leap  in 
the  franchise  that  came  in  1916,  and  only  an  extension  of 
the  elementary  education  age  to  at  least  sixteen  (as  it 
obtains  in  America)  will  make  democracy  safe  for  England. 
An  uneducated  democracy  will  always  be  liable  to  be 
“fooled”  by  demagogues  or  stampeded  into  disastrous 
courses  by  appeals  to  self-interest. 

I  am  always  thankful  that  during  my  first  two  years 
in  London  I  had  to  spend  a  great  deal  of  my  working-day 
in  and  around  the  House  of  Commons.  It  gave  me  an 
insight  into  the  machinery  of  Government  that  I  might 
have  failed  to  acquire  by  years  of  assiduous  reading.  My 


Journalism  in  1890 


II 


work  was  never  in  the  gallery  of  the  House  of  Commons 
— though  I  spent  many  evenings  there.  What  took  me 
to  St.  Stephens  was  the  reporting  of  committees  of  both 
Houses  on  private  bills.  There  were  Royal  Commissions, 
special  departmental  inquiries,  deputations  to  Ministers 
and  parliamentary  conferences,  all  of  which  it  was  my 
duty  to  attend  and  report.  At  the  time  I  thought  it 
drudgery,  like  unto  the  treadmill,  to  attend  day  after  day 
for  weeks  a  Board  of  Trade  inquiry  into  railway  rates 
conducted  by  Lord  Balfour  of  Burleigh  and  Sir  Courtenay 
Boyle  in  1890-1.  Almost  every  industry  in  England  ap¬ 
peared,  through  counsel,  before  that  Commission,  fighting 
for  railway  facilities  and  fair  rates  of  transport.  I  learned 
far  more  than  I  imagined  about  British  industries  as  I 
sat  listening  to  the  evidence  of  witnesses  and  the  speeches 
of  barristers;  and  in  the  thirty  intervening  years  I  have 
often  thanked  my  lucky  stars  that  it  fell  to  my  lot  to  follow 
that  inquiry. 

Another  Commission  that  chained  me  to  Westminster 
for  weeks  concerned  itself  with  the  equitable  distribution 
of  the  Whisky  money  (Exchequer  Contribution  Fund) 
between  the  county  councils  and  the  county  boroughs. 
The  elite  of  the  parliamentary  Bar  were  all  engaged  on 
that  task.  I  remember  the  shock  I  sustained  one  day 
when,  by  chance,  I  realized  how  lightly  public  money  is 
squandered.  Sir  Richard  Webster  was  representing  the 
Lancashire  County  Council.  All  the  county  boroughs  in 
Lancashire  had  briefed  counsel  for  the  inquiry.  The  day 
came  when  the  last  of  the  county  boroughs  had  presented 
its  case  with  the  exception  of  a  small  borough  represented 
by  a  rising  young  barrister.  I  was  sitting  near  Sir 
Richard  Webster  who,  as  representing  the  county  council, 
had  to  reply  to  the  whole  case  for  the  boroughs.  As  lunch 
time  approached  I  heard  him  whisper  to  the  representative 
of  the  last  small  borough  :  “Keep  going  until  three  o’clock, 
I  can’t  get  back  till  then.’’  At  that  time  the  young  barrister 


12 


The  Best  I  Remember 

had  said  all  he  had  to  say,  but  obedient  to  the  eminent 
Queen’s  Counsel,  he  reiterated  and  re-reiterated  his  whole 
case,  talking  laboriously  with  an  eye  turned  constantly 
to  the  door,  until  at  half-past  three  Sir  Richard  Webster 

returned.  “Thank  you,  L - ,”  he  said  softly  as  he  took 

his  seat;  “you’ve  right  nobly  done  your  duty.”  Then 
the  rising  young  barrister  sat  down,  and  Sir  Richard 
Webster  opened  his  reply — only,  after  speaking  for  twenty 
minutes,  to  suggest  an  adjournment.  The  Commission 
rose,  and  it  being  Friday,  adjourned  till  the  following 
Thursday.  I  do  not  know  what  the  daily  cost  of  that 
inquiry  really  was,  but  it  must  have  run  into  thousands 
of  pounds  per  diem,  and  I  vividly  recall  my  sense  of 
disgust  that,  when  every  minute  cost  so  much,  a  full  two 
hours  were  wasted  to  serve  the  convenience  of  a  distin¬ 
guished  lawyer. 

Nowhere — not  in  Parliament,  nor  in  the  Law  Courts, 
nor  On  any  other  platform,  religious  or  political,  have  I 
heard  finer  speaking  than  in  the  committee  rooms  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  The  leader  of  the  parliamentary  Bar, 
when  I  first  began  haunting  St.  Stephens,  was  Mr.  Samuel 
Pope,  a  man  of  prodigious  size,  physically,  with  a  choleric 
temperament  and  a  very  red  face  and  nose — all  the  more 
remarkable  since  he  was  a  very  ardent  teetotaller  and 
temperance  advocate.  He  was  an  amazingly  fluent 
speaker,  and  could  be  persuasively  and  powerfully  eloquent 
in  dealing  with  the  severely  technical  matters  upon  which 
he  was  briefed.  And  not  even  Sir  Charles  Russell  him¬ 
self  was  more  formidable  as  a  cross-examiner.  Mr.  Cripps, 
now  Lord  Parmoor,  was  at  that  time  the  handsomest  man 
at  the  pvarliamentary  Bar.  His  Greek  profile  always  fas¬ 
cinated  me  as  completely  as  his  exquisite  courtesy,  which, 
however,  cloaked  no  weakness  as  an  advocate.  There  were 
other  brilliant  advocates  at  the  parliamentary  Bar  in  the 
early  ’nineties — men  like  Mr.  Littler,  Mr.  Balfour  Browne 
and  Mr.  Bidder — but  my  memory  clings  lovingly  to  the 


Journalism  in  1890 


13 


figures  of  Mr.  Pope  and  Mr.  Cripps.  They  were  a  study 
in  contrasts — Mr.  Pope  with  his  explosive  vehemence 
and  Mr.  Cripps  with  his  imperturbable  urbanity.  Their 
methods  were  as  poles  asunder;  yet  somehow  I  imagine 
that  one  was  as  often  on  the  victorious  side  as  the  other. 
As  Lord  Parmoor,  Mr.  Cripps  is  now  one  of  the  most 
impenitent  idealists  in  the  House  of  Lords  and  a  man  who 
throws  his  weight  into  every  sound  movement  for  pro¬ 
moting  peace  and  goodwill.  The  extraordinary  quality  of 
mind  that  makes  a  man  really  successful  at  the  parlia¬ 
mentary  Bar  impressed  me  greatly  thirty  years  ago,  and 
still  impresses  me.  The  giants  in  the  early  ’nineties 
seemed  to  me  to  have  the  whole  technique  of  all  the 
professions  and  sciences  at  their  fingers’  ends. 

Fleet  Street  was  somewhat  tavern-ridden  when  first  I 
entered  London  journalism,  and  the  newspaper  men  of 
that  time  were,  I  concluded,  among  the  best  patrons  of  the 
public-houses.  The  taste  for  drink  was  very  pronounced 
among  the  old  reporters  with  whom  I  mingled  thirty  years 
ago.  A  total  abstainer  was  rare — almost  a  curiosity,  in 
fact.  In  this  respect  I  have  seen  a  steady,  cumulative 
improvement  through  the  years.  I  do  not  suggest  for  a 
moment  that  journalists  are  now  wholly  immune  from  the 
drink  temptation ;  but  the  standard  of  sobriety  has  vastly 
improved,  and  one  might  say  now  that  journalists  generally 
are  as  abstemious  as  members  of  any  other  profession.  In 
my  memories  of  the  early  ’nineties  I  recall  quite  a  number 
of  sorry  wrecks  who  haunted  Fleet  Street.  Some  of  them 
were  very  dilapidated  old  men ;  but  one  of  them  was  a 
very  dignified  figure,  with  a  most  aristocratic  deportment 
and  a  fine  flowing  white  beard.  Fie  was  a  penny-a-liner 
who  had  once  been  a  leader-writer.  One  of  the  ablest 
journalists  in  Fleet  Street  twenty-five  years  ago  was  a 
scholarly  man — a  Scottish  University  graduate — who  was 
rarely  quite  sober,  and  indeed  declared  that  he  could  not 
write  intelligibly  until  after  his  fifth  whisky  and  soda. 


14 


The  Best  I  Remember 


Round  about  his  tenth  whisky  he  coruscated.  He  died 
prematurely,  with  his  best  music  still  within  him.  Another 
very  capable  journalist,  whose  speciality  was  in  ecclesias¬ 
tical  affairs,  achieved  a  great  coup  when  in  liquor.  He 
was  representing  the  Daily  Chronicle  at  the  British 
Association  meetings  in  1898  when  Louis  de  Rougemont 
— ^whose  amazing  stories  of  adventurous  explorations  in 
the  South  Seas  had  given  the  Wide  World  Magazine  its 
initial  popularity — appeared  before  the  Anthropological 
Section,  De  Rougemont  had  emerged  with  flying  colours 
from  close  cross-examination  by  Sir  Edward  Brabrook  and 
the  secretary  of  the  Geographical  Society,  and  his  speech 
at  the  British  Association  was  the  bonne-bouche  of  the 
Bristol  meetings.  The  daily  papers  published  extended 
reports  of  his  story  of  riding  on  giant  turtles  and  other 
fantastic  feats  of  the  Munchausen  order.  The  Daily 
Chronicle  alone  ignored  the  explorer’s  amazing  achieve¬ 
ments — for  the  simple  reason  that  its  representative  was 
sleeping  off  the  effects  of  exceptionally  heavy  libations. 
When  the  editor  of  the  Daily  Chronicle  telegraphed  for 
explanation  of  the  omission,  the  journalist  boldly  declared 
that  he  ignored  De  Rougemont  because  he  did  not  believe 
a  word  of  his  story.  That  very  day  a  man  who  had  known 
De  Rougemont  out  in  Australia  as  a  Swiss  beachcomber, 
named  Henri  Louis  Grein,  rang  up  the  Daily  Chronicle 
on  the  telephone.  The  outcome  was  the  famous  expose 
of  De  Rougemont. 

Once,  at  a  Wycliffe  commemoration  at  Lutterworth,  I 
found  the  same  journalist  in  a  condition  which  made  it 
obviously  impossible  for  him  to  attend  the  function.  I 
managed  to  get  out  of  him  some  idea  of  what  amount  of 
“copy  ”  he  had  been  instructed  to  send  to  his  paper,  and 
by  searching  his  pockets  I  found  the  “pass  ”  for  telegraph¬ 
ing  his  report.  So  I  was  able  to  cover  his  deficiency  by 
writing  a  descriptive  sketch  of  the  proceedings  and 
“wiring  ”  it  in  his  name.  I  imagine  that  there  were  very 


Journalism  in  1890 


15 


few  journalists  in  Fleet  Street  who  had  not  at  one  time 
or  another  rendered  this  journalist  just  such  service. 
Apart  from  his  one  weakness  he  was  a  man  we  all  liked 
for  his  chivalrous  instincts  and  admired  for  his  journalistic 
ability.  He,  too,  was  cut  off  in  middle  age — “a  martyr 
to  delirium  tremens,*’  I  fear. 


CHAPTER  III 


POLITICS  AND  POLITICIANS 

Mr.  GLADSTONE  was  still  dominating  the  House  of 
Commons,  though  not  in  office,  in  my  early  days  in 
London,  and  I  sought  every  opportunity  to  hear  the  “old 
man  eloquent.”  Though  so  old  he  was  rarely  out  of  his 
seat  on  the  front  bench,  and  I  never  saw  him  sprawling. 
He  not  only  listened  to  speakers — even  if  thev  were  men 
of  no  consequence  addressing  the  House  from  the  back 
benches — but  he  had  a  habit  of  twisting  his  head  round 
towards  the  speaker  to  watch  him  closely  as  well  as  to 
listen  intently.  Mr.  Gladstone  had  a  profound  respect  for 
the  House  of  Commons.  He  was  perhaps  the  last  Prime 
Minister  to  take  the  House  really  seriously.  As  leader  of 
the  Commons  he  always  seemed  to  suggest  that  he  recog¬ 
nized  that  the  House  was  his  master,  and  he,  as  Premier, 
its  creation.  Things  are  very  different  now.  Mr.  Glad¬ 
stone  accepted  the  principle  that  the  Commons  could  dis¬ 
miss  him  by  a  hostile  vote  if  he  thwarted  its  will. 
Moreover,  Mr.  Gladstone  ruled  his  Cabinet  and  preserved 
inviolate  the  idea  of  collective  responsibility — a  principle 
which  seems  to  have  been  jettisoned  in  our  own  times. 
Mr.  Gladstone’s  dominant  conviction  that  Heaven  was 
always  on  his  side  was  sincere  enough,  but  it  did  not 
always  secure  acceptance  from  his  own  followers.  Sir 
William  Harcourt  once  said  that  he  did  not  object  to 
Mr.  G.  always  having  an  ace  of  trumps  tucked  up  his 
sleeve — but  he  did  object  to  his  saying  the  Almighty  had 
put  it  there. 

During  my  first  years  in  London  journalism  it  fell  to 
my  lot,  often  once  or  twice  a  week  in  the  parliamentary 

i6 


Politics  and  Politicians 


17 


session,  to  report  “deputations”  to  Ministers  of  State. 
They  were  solemn,  almost  august,  occasions.  Ministers 
of  Lord  Salisbury’s  Unionist  Government,  which  was  in 
office  at  that  time,  were  austere  and  formidable  personages 
who  hedged  themselves  around  with  a  divinity  all  their 
own.  They  received  deputations  from  trade  organizations 
in  a  spirit  of  condescension — like  miniature  Curzons,  in 
fact.  The  “deputation,”  usually  led  by  an  M.P.,  “waited 
upon  ”  the  Minister  with  a  deferential  demeanour,  and 
when  solemnly  ushered  into  the  Board  of  Trade  or  Local 
Government  Board  office  at  the  appointed  hour,  awaited 
the  advent  of  the  important  man  in  quietude  and  humility. 
Till  Dr.  Fairbairn  bluntly  told  Mr.  Balfour  that  “we  will 
not  submit,”  the  note  of  defiance  was  never  heard  at  a 
ministerial  deputation.  The  learned  principal  opened  a 
new  era  in  deputations — ^an  era  of  truculence.  Thirty 
years  ago  a  deputation  presented  its  case  through  spokes¬ 
men  who  addressed  Cabinet  Ministers  in  reverential  tones, 
and  almost  expected  a  cavalier  reply,  or  in  many  cases  no 
reply  at  all — merely  a  nod  indicating  that  the  interview 
was  over.  Sometimes,  prompted  by  the  Permanent  Secre¬ 
tary  of  the  State  Department,  the  Minister  “waited  upon  ” 
would  give  a  stereotyped  official  reply.  I  have  known 
cases  where  the  reply  was  read  from  a  memorandum  pre¬ 
pared  beforehand.  No  more  would  be  heard  of  the 
deputation’s  representations.  Occasionally  a  little  humour 
would  creep  into  a  deputation’s  visit.  When  he  was  Lord 
President  of  the  Council,  the  Duke  of  Devonshire  put  some 
questions  to  an  education  deputation  that  revealed  such  a 
fundamental  and  abysmal  ignorance  of  the  education 
system  he  was  supposed  to  be  administering  that  a  titter 
went  round  the  room.  Generally,  however.  Ministers 
adopted  the  Irish  maxim,  “Never  let  a  man  know  what 
you  don’t  know,”  and  by  pursuing  a  policy  of  silence  came 
out  of  the  ordeal  with  untarnished  reputations  for  omni¬ 


science. 


i8 


The  Best  I  Remember 


Nowadays  deputations  stump  off  from  Labour  confer¬ 
ences  to  Downing  Street  on  the  spur  of  the  moment  and 
storm  the  P.M.  in  his  fastness.  And  when  there  they  talk 
to  him  with  a  candour  that  is  not  always  veneered  by 
excessive  courtesy.  When  'Mr.  Lloyd  George  was  facing 
a  deputation  of  miners  just  before  the  great  coal  strike  of 
1921,  one  of  the  miners’  leaders  tried  to  make  the  Prime 
Minister  understand  what  the  men’s  demand  for  a  “pool  ” 
really  implied.  He  explained  it  by  two  or  three  examples 
of  its  probable  operation.  Still  the  Premier  failed  to 
grasp  the  idea — possibly  he  did  not  want  to  compre¬ 
hend  it.  After  one  more  effort,  also  in  vain,  the  miners’ 
leader  lost  patience.  “You’re  daft,  you  silly  beggar!  ” 
he  ejaculated  at  the  puzzled  Prime  Minister.  And  Mr. 
Lloyd  George  .sat  back  in  his  chair  and  roared  with 
laughter.  Thirty  years  ago  a  Minister  would  have  turned 
his  eyes  upward,  confidently  expecting  to  see  the  heavens 
falling. 

Though  I  heard  Mr.  Gladstone  speak  on  many  occa¬ 
sions,  in  and  out  of  Parliament,  in  the  ’nineties,  I  never 
heard  him  save  once,  and  that  was  in  the  ’eighties  at 
Manchester,  rise  to  his  greatest  heights.  But  I  was  in 
the  House  of  Commons  on  the  occasion  of  one  of  his 
fiercest  encounters  with  Mr.  Joseph  Chamberlain,  and  I 
shall  never  forget  it.  Overnight  Mr.  Chamberlain  had 
confronted  the  G.O.M.  with  a  reference  he  had  made  years 
before  to  the  Irish  members  as  “men  marching  through 
rapine  and  plunder  to  the  dismemberment  and  disintegra¬ 
tion  of  the  Empire.”  Mr.  Gladstone  hotly  repudiated 
Mr.  Chamberlain’s  orientation  of  that  phrase,  and  for 
half  an  hour  the  House  was  held  enthralled  by  the 
Homeric  encounter  between  the  two  greatest  debaters  of 
the  age.  The  buttons  were  off  the  foils,  and  both  speakers 
were  out  to  draw  blood.  I  should  not  like  to  have  been 
compelled  to  say  who  came  off  best  in  the  duel.  Mr. 
Austen  Chamberlain,  then  a  slim,  monocled  youth,  was 


Politics  and  Politicians 


19 


kept  running  to  and  from  the  library  bringing  Mr. 
Chamberlain  books  and  papers  to  corroborate  his  charges. 

This  was  one  of  the  liveliest  evenings  I  ever  spent  in 
the  House,  for  when  this  Gladstone-Chamberlain  scene 
was  over,  Mr.  Michael  Davitt,  of  Fenian  agitation  fame, 
rose  to  make  his  maiden  speech.  Davitt  had  only  one 
arm — he  had  lost  the  other  in  a  factory  machine — and  this 
infirmity  made  the  use  of  his  notes  rather  conspicuous  as 
he  spoke.  When  Davitt  had  been  speaking  a  few  minutes, 
another  member — I  think  it  was  Sir  Ellis  Ashmead-Bartlett 
— raised  a  point  of  order.  The  hon.  member,  he  declared, 
was  reading  his  speech.  Mr.  Peel,  who  was  then  the 
Speaker  of  the  House,  was  obviously  outraged  by  the 
callous-sj)irited  objection.  His  glare  at  the  objector  made 
one  feel  that  he  was  throwing  vitriol  with  his  eyes.  Then 
in  the  gentlest  of  sympathetic  voices  he  reminded  Mr. 
Davitt  of  the  rule  of  the  House  that  members  must  not 
read  their  speeches.  Davitt  proceeded  without  making 
the  slightest  change  in  the  use  of  his  notes.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  he  was  not  reading  at  all,  but  with  only  one 
available  arm  he  had  to  lay  each  separate  page  of  his 
notes  on  the  seat  behind  him  before  he  could  use  the  next 
page. 

Mention  of  Sir  Ellis  Ashmead-Bartlett  recalls  one  of 
the  best  comedies  I  ever  saw  in  Parliament.  Sir  Ellis 
was  given  a  minor  office  in  Lord  Salisbury’s  Government 
on  the  express  condition  that  he  should  not  speak.  As 
soon  as  the  Salisbury  Government’s  fall  released  him  from 
this  Trappist  pledge.  Sir  Ellis  jumped  at  his  freedom. 
His  first  speech  provided  the  farcical  comedy.  He  rose 
late  at  night  and  moved  the  adjournment  to  secure  his 
title  to  speak  first  next  day.  That  had  not  been  his  inten¬ 
tion,  but  he  had  failed  to  catch  the  Speaker’s  eye  earlier. 
Unfortunately  he  had  sent  his  speech  beforehand  to  a 
Sheffield  paper  (he  was  M.P.  for  a  division  of  that  city), 
and  the  whole  oration  was  published  in  the  next  morning’s 


20 


The  Best  I  Remember 


issue  with  “hear,  hears,”  “loud  applause  ”  and  “laughter  ” 
dotted  freely  all  over  the  columns.  When,  next  afternoon. 
Sir  Ellis  rose  to  make  his  speech  every  Irish  member 
produced  a  copy  of  the  Sheffield  paper  from  his  pocket  and, 
following  the  speech  closely,  “hear  beared, ”  “applauded  ” 
and  “laughed  ”  loudly  and  ironically  wherever  those  inter¬ 
pellations  appeared  in  the  premature  report.  The  House 
enjoyed  the  joke  immensely.  Strange  to  say.  Sir  Ellis 
went  through  the  farce  to  the  very  last  act.  He  did  not 
curtail  his  speech  by  a  line. 

Though  we  profess  that  our  system  of  parliamentary 
debate  is  “government  by  discussion,”  it  is  a  curious  fact 
that  speakers  rarely  change  votes  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  In  my  parliamentary  memory  it  has,  I  think, 
been  claimed  for  only  one  speech  that  it  changed  the  mind 
of  a  sufficient  number  of  members  to  affect  the  result  of  a 
division.  This  was  the  speech  made  by  Mr.  H.  H. 
Fowler,  when  Secretary  for  India.  I  heard  that  speech. 
I  really  went  down  to  the  House  expecting  to  see  a  Govern¬ 
ment  turned  out.  Lancashire  was  in  a  ferment  over  new 
duties  on  their  cotton  goods  entering  India,  and  Free 
Traders  were  aghast  at  what  they  imagined  was  Mr. 
Fowler’s  departure  from  strictly  orthodox  Cobdenism. 
Until  Mr.  Fowler  spoke,  the  whole  trend  of  the  debate 
had  gone  heavily  against  the  Government,  and  a  “cave” 
sufficiently  large  to  carry  a  hostile  vote  had  become  mani¬ 
fest.  Mr.  Fowler  spoke  for  about  an  hour.  The  speech 
was  a  tour  de  force.  Certainly  I  had  never  heard  such 
a  powerful  mobilization  of  arguments.  Mr.  Fowler  was 
a  very  chilly  personality  (his  daughter  says  of  him  in  her 
biography  that  he  was  the  type  of  father  who  always 
liked  to  let  his  children  have  his  own  way),  and  I  imagine 
that  the  House  of  Commons  never  felt  any  overwhelming 
affection  for  him.  His  conquest  in  the  Indian  Cotton 
Duties  speech  was  all  the  more  remarkable.  It  was  a 
complete  triumph  over  an  unwilling  House,  and  it  saved 


Politics  and  Politicians 


21 


for  a  time  a  Government  that  had  worn  out  its  welcome 
and  was  tottering  to  its  fall. 

The  most  engaging  political  personality  I  have  ever 
known  was  the  late  Mr.  Tom  Ellis,  who  was  chief  whip 
of  the  Rosebery  Government.  He  had  a  very  precarious 
majority  at  his  command,  made  all  the  more  precarious 
because  Mr.  Lloyd  George  was  raising  the  standard  of 
revolt  in  Wales  against  the  Government.  No  chief  whip 
had  so  many  tribulations  crowding  upon  one  another  as 
this  gifted  young  Welsh  Nationalist.  I  came  to  know 
him  through  Dr.  Burford  Hooke;  and  I  often  spent  an 
hour  with  him  at  his  Downing  Street  office.  His  kind¬ 
ness  to  me  I  can  never  forget — for  I  was  only  a  youngster. 
Ellis  wanted  me  to  enter  the  Liberal  publication  depart¬ 
ment,  which  had  not  then  been  vitalized  by  the  genius 
of  Mr.  Charles  Geake,  and  I  was  sorely  tempted  to  forsake 
journalism  then.  But  Fleet  Street  had  not  lost  its  fascina¬ 
tions  for  me  at  that  time,  and  I  had  not  then  discovered 
that  journalism  is  only  “an  excellent  profession  to  get  out 
of.”  My  memory  of  Tom  Ellis  is  ever  green.  There 
was  a  transparent  sincerity  about  him — what  I  might 
almost  call  an  irrepressible  vivacity  of  faith  in  Liberalism. 
He  would  have  died — did  he  not  die? — for  Liberalism 
and  for  Wales.  In  the  very  thick  of  “the  dirty  trade  of 
party  politics  ”  he  maintained  a  purity  of  soul  and  scorn 
of  cynicism  which  set  him  in  a  category  apart  from  most 
politicians.  One  felt  he  was  too  good  for  political  life. 
He  had  a  standard  of  truth  that  he  might  have  borrowed 
from  Robert  Browning.  And  he  was  wholly  above  self- 
seeking.  He  must  have  been  beloved  of  the  gods,  for  he 
died  very  young. 

Another  politician  whose  sincerity  always  struck  me  as 
patent  was  Sir  Henry  Campbell-Bannerman.  He,  too, 
was  devoid  of  all  self-seeking.  I  remember  hearing  Mr. 
William  Brace,  the  Labour  member,  expressing  his 
admiration  for  “  C.-B.,”  because  he  could  not  be  “got  at.” 


22 


The  Best  I  Remember 


“You  can’t  tempt  him,  old  C.-B,”  he  said;  “he  has  every¬ 
thing  he  wants  and  you  can’t  frighten  him,  because  he 
wouldn’t  care  if  he  went  out  of  office  to-morrow.  He’s  too 
honest  for  politics.”  The  patience  with  which  C.-B.  wore 
down  the  bitter  prejudice  against  himself  was  an  achieve¬ 
ment  of  character.  At  the  time  of  the  Boer  War  the  hatred 
of  C.-B.  was  so  intense  that  certain  newspapers  boycotted 
his  speeches.  One  day  the  Daily  Mail  printed  a  para¬ 
graph  that  “Sir  Henry  Campbell-Bannerman  spoke  last 

night  at - .  How  long  will  the  English  people  tolerate 

this  traitor?  ”  Not  a  word  of  report  of  the  speech.  C.-B. 
had  to  submit  to  much  wounding  even  in  the  house  of  his 
friends. 

C.-B.’s  patience  was  extraordinary.  I  will  not  say  that 
he  suffered  fools  gladly,  but  I  once  saw  him  exercise  a 
supererogatory  degree  of  forbearance  with  a  drink-be¬ 
fuddled  man.  C.-B.  had  gone  down  to  a  seaside  town  to 
open  a  Railwaymen’s  Convalescent  Home.  The  arrange¬ 
ments  were  excellent,  in  all  respects  save  one.  Nobody 
had  been  charged  with  the  duty  of  looking  after  Sir  Henry. 
He  was  left  to  wander  about  the  grounds  alone.  After  a 
time  he  found  his  way  into  the  refreshment  marquee,  and 
sat  down  at  a  small  tea-table  at  which  I  had  taken  a  seat. 
I  bowed,  and  Sir  Henry  entered  genially  into  conversation, 
and  when  I  explained  that  I  waS  a  journalist  from  London 
he  chatted  about  journalism  and  journalists,  English  and 
French,  in  a  very  engaging  way.  While  we  were  talking 
a  middle-aged  man,  who  would  no  doubt  have  described 
himself  as  a  gentleman,  but  who  was  palpably  in  the 
garrulous  stage  of  drunkenness  (smelling  of  spirits,  too), 
forced  himself  upon  Sir  Henry.  “I’m  a  true  Blue,”  he 
kept  saying;  “true  Blue,  sir,  a  Conservative  of  the  true 
Blue  sort.”  He  tried  to  make  Sir  Henry  understand  that 
for  all  that  he  had  no  personal  animosity  against  “damned 
Radicals.”  Indeed,  he  wanted  C.-B.  to  recognize  that 
the  absence  of  that  animosity  was  proof  of  the  splendour 


Politics  and  Politicians 


23 


of  his  toleration.  Sir  Henry  was  uncomfortable,  but  his 
affability  was  proof  against  any  display  of  annoyance.  He 
stood  the  infliction  for  ten  minutes;  but  when  the  fellow  sat 
down  at  the  same  table  and  called  for  tea,  C.-B.  quickly 
got  up  and  strolled  into  the  grounds  again.  I  met  him 
later  on  one  of  the  paths,  walking  alone,  and  he  stopped 
me  to  say  “our  true  Blue  friend  presented  a  pathetic 
spectacle.”  At  the  railway  station  I  saw  the  “true  Blue  ” 
making  his  way  into  Sir  Henry’s  saloon  to  assure  him 
again,  I  suppose,  that  he  bore  C.-B.  no  animosity,  notwith¬ 
standing  his  Radicalism. 


c 


CHAPTER  IV 


RELIGION  IN  POLITICS 

The  House  of  Commons  when  first  I  became  familiar 
with  it  was  a  two-party  House — for  though  in  theory 
the  Irish  party  was  Independent  it  was  affiliated,  by  virtue 
of  its  hopes,  with  the  Liberals.  Possibly  we  shall  never  see 
a  strictly  two-party  House  again.  The  rise  of  the  Labour 
party,  as  an  Independent  unit  in  Parliament,  has,  of 
course,  occurred  in  my  time.  There  were  Labour  members 
like  Mr.  T.  Burt,  Mr.  Henry  Broadhurst,  and  Mr. 
William  Abraham  before  1890;  but  they  ranked  as 
Radicals  within  the  Liberal  fold.  Though  I  did  not  know 
him  with  any  real  intimacy  I  met  Mr.  Keir  Hardie  fre¬ 
quently;  and  when  I  had  overcome  an  initial  prejudice 
(which  I  confess  I  felt  after  his  theatrical  entry  into  the 
House  in  a  deer-stalker  cap)  I  came  to  have  a  profound 
admiration  for  him.  He  was  transparently  sincere  and 
absolutely  free  from  self-seeking.  He  lived  the  simplest 
of  simple  lives  in  a  tiny  cottage  in  Neville’s  Court — a 
crowded  alley  off  Fetter  Lane — and  except  for  his  tobacco 
and  a  few  books  he  spent  nothing  on  himself  outside  the 
barest  necessaries  of  life.  No  one  I  have  ever  met  took 
Jesus  Christ  quite  so  literally  as  Keir  Hardie.  The 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  was  practical  politics  to  him.  His 
religion  was  soaked  into  his  being,  and  his  sensitiveness  to 
the  pain  and  injustice  around  him  did  not  merely  distress 
his  mind;  it  seared  his  soul.  He  had  been  brought  up  in 
the  Evangelical  Union  Church  in  Scotland  (now  fused 
with  the  Congregationalists),  and  in  1892  he  created  a 
furore  at  the  Congregational  Union  Assembly  at  Bradford 

24 


25 


Religion  in  Politics 

by  arraigning  the  churches  for  their  unconcern  over  social 
inequalities  and  economic  injustice.  “The  Christianity  of 
the  schools  has  had  its  day,”  he  declared.  “The 
Christianity  of  Christ  is  coming  to  the  front.  You  preach 
to  the  respectability  in  your  congregations.”  The 
ministers  howled  their  denial.  “  You  do,  you  do,  you  do,” 
reiterated  Keir  Hardie.  “You  leave  the  suffering  masses 
of  humanity  outside.  In  the  slums  of  the  city  where  men, 
and  women,  and  children  made  in  the  image  of  God  are 
being  driven  down  into  hell  for  time  and  eternity,  you  have 
no  word  of  hope  and  mercy,  and  you  have  not  a  helping 
hand  to  stretch  out.”  Though  howled  down  in  a  pas¬ 
sionate  temper  in  1892  Keir  Hardie  lived  to  see  the  social 
question  become  the  serious  concern  of  the  Free  Churches, 
or,  at  any  rate,  of  the  younger  Free  Church  ministers  and 
laymen.  Long  afterwards  I  heard  Keir  Hardie  say,  with 
quivering  lips,  that  if  he  had  to  live  his  life  again  he  would 
dedicate  himself  to  preaching  the  gospel  of  Jesus. 

One  reason  why  I  watched  with  close  interest  the  rise 
of  the  Labour  party  was  that  its  early  leaders  were  almost 
all  Free  Churchmen,  men  who  learned  the  art  of  public 
speech  as  Methodist  and  Baptist  preachers,  and  derived 
their  ethical  passion  from  the  gospels.  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw, 
who  is  not  always  a  gentle  critic  of  the  Churches,  told  the 
Socialists  of  Glasgow  that  at  the  back  of  all  popular  move¬ 
ments  there  must  be  a  religion,  and  by  way  of  illustration 
he  added:  “The  miners  would  never  have  raised  them¬ 
selves  through  their  Trades  Unionism  and  Co-operative 
Societies  had  they  not  raised  themselves  through  their 
Methodist  chapels.”  Even  yet — though  nowadays  trade 
union  ward  meetings  form  the  training  ground  for  potential 
Labour  M.P.s  rather  than  chapel  meetings  and  out¬ 
door  preaching  services — many  of  the  leading  figures  in  the 
Labour  party  are  debtors  to  Free  Church  training.  Mr. 
Arthur  Henderson,  M.P.,  is  a  Wesleyan  lay  preacher. 
Originally  he  was  a  Congregationalist,  and  when  a  boy 


26 


The  Best  I  Remember 


used  to  blow  the  organ  at  St.  Paul's  Congregational 
Church,  Newcastle-on-Tyne.  He  became  a  Methodist  as  a 
young  man,  and  he  is  still  a  faithful  Wesleyan.  Mr.  John 
R.  Clynes  was,  in  early  boyhood,  associated  with  a  Con¬ 
gregational  Church  at  Salford,  when  the  Rev.  Bernard 
J.  Snell  was  its  minister.  William  Abraham  was  a 
Welsh  Calvinistic  Methodist  lay  preacher,  Mr.  W.  Brace 
is  a  Baptist,  and  Mr.  James  H.  Thomas  was  at  one  time  a 
Baptist  Sunday-school  teacher.  Mr.  Thomas  began  earn¬ 
ing  his  living  by  selling  newspapers  at  Newport  when  he 
was  about  nine  years  of  age,  but  getting  a  job  on  the  rail¬ 
way  worked  his  way  to  the  engine-driver  grade.  His  fine 
quality  of  mind  was  observed  when,  on  one  occasion,  he 
went  as  a  deputation  from  the  railway  men  to  the  directors 
of  the  G.W.R.  After  the  interview  he  was  offered  a  well- 
paid  post  in  the  Swindon  office.  It  would  have  vastly  im¬ 
proved  both  his  income  and  his  prospects,  but  “Jim  ” 
Thomas’s  prompt  reply  was:  “No,  thank  you,  sir,  I  don’t 
want  to  leave  my  class.”  Mr.  George  Barnes,  M.P.,  is  a 
Congregationalist,  deeply  interested  in  Browning  Hall 
Settlement  at  Walworth. 

The  Christian  idealism  of  the  Labour  party  has  all 
along  made  a  powerful  appeal  to  the  younger  generation  of 
Free  Church  ministers,  and  at  the  General  Election  of  1918 
an  immense  number  of  them  revolted  from  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  to  throw  in  their  lot  with  the  Labour  men.  Many 
of  them,  I  know,  have  been  bitterly  disappointed  at  the 
failure  of  the  Labour  party  in  the  House  of  Commons  to 
put  up  any  effective  opposition  excepting  upon  “Bread  and 
Butter  ”  issues.  This  disappointment  is  not  confined  to 
young  Free  Church  ministers. 

Herr  Bebel,  who  ruled  the  Socialist  group  in  the  German 
Reichstag  with  a  rod  of  iron,  imposed  a  pledge  of  total 
abstinence  upon  his  followers.  Mr.  Keir  Hardie  in  1906 
did  his  utmost  to  induce  the  Labour  group  returned  at  that 
General  Election  to  bind  themselves  to  be  teetotallers 


27 


Religion  in  Politics 

while  within  the  precincts  of  the  House  of  Commons.  The 
attempt  was  abortive,  perhaps  because  it  cut  across  the 
British  instinct  of  personal  freedom  and  individual  moral 
responsibility.  Yet  it  would  have  been  a  self-denying 
ordinance  which  might  have  proved  worth  all  the  sacrifice. 
I  once  heard  a  cynical  Parliamentarian  say  :  “Oh,  but  you 
can  square  a  Labour  member  with  a  bottle  of  champagne.” 
I  do  not  believe  it,  but  it  is  distressing  to  hear  it  said.  The 
atmosphere  of  the  House  breeds  cynicism,  and  the  idea 
that  every  man  has  his  price  is  almost  entrenched  at 
Westminster.  For  every  Tory  member  who  thinks  that  a 
Labour  man’s  price  is  a  bottle  of  champagne  there  is  a 
Labour  M.P.  who  thinks  that  a  Tory  member  can  be 
squared  by  a  subordinate  office  and  a  Liberal  member  who 
can  be  silenced  by  a  knighthood. 

Free  Churchmen  have  almost  won  their  liberty  in  the 
State,  but  they  are  still  at  the  mercy  of  capricious  land¬ 
lords.  Sites  for  chapels  are  not  easily  procured,  and 
chapel  leases  are  often  loaded  with  arbitrary  restrictions 
concerning  the  uses  to  which  the  buildings  may  be  put. 
The  grievance  is  felt  most  in  the  rural  districts  and  in  the 
small  towns.  In  the  great  cities  the  social  prestige  of  the 
Established  Church  has  almost  gone — a  Free  Churchman 
finds  it  no  drawback  to  be  a  Free  Churchman,  and  while 
he  wishes  to  be  on  good  terms  with  the  clergy  he  tolerates 
no  patronage ;  but  in  the  country  the  social  screw  is  still 
remorselessly  turned  in  many  quarters.  What  made  me  a 
political  dissenter  and  a  fighter  against  privilege  was  the 
clause  which  a  Tory  peer  in  Lancashire  imposed  upon  his 
leaseholders.  My  father  was  a  Congregational  deacon, 
and  the  son,  grandson,  and  great-grandson  of  Congrega¬ 
tional  deacons,  but  I  twice  had  to  witness  his  signature  to 
a  lease  embodying  a  covenant  that  for  the  whole  period  of 
999  years  there  should  not  be  erected  on  the  land  he  was 
leasing  “a  public-house,  slaughter-house,  dissenting 
chapel,  or  other  nuisance/'  Twenty-five  years  passed,  and 


28 


The  Best  I  Remember 


then  came  a  chance  to  avenge  that  insult  to  my  father’s 
faith.  It  came  when  the  Peers  threw  out  Mr.  Lloyd 
George’s  Budget.  My  belief  in  the  Budget  was  not  very 
profound;  but,  by  pen  and  voice,  by  canvassing,  and  every 
possible  means  I  pulled  my  weight  against  the  Peers  in  that 
election.  That  clause  in  that  old  lease,  adding  insult  to 
injury,  kept  the  flame  of  Radicalism  burning  in  me. 
Inequalities  in  education,  in  burial  and  marriage  laws,  and 
a  lot  of  exasperating  little  disabilities  kept  the  old  Noncon¬ 
formist  spirit  ablaze  in  this  way.  While  Free  Churchmen 
have  no  grave  grievances  to-day  they  cannot  wholly  forget 
that  no  measure  for  redressing  their  former  grievances 
ever  went  through  Parliament  with  the  help,  or  even  with 
the  expressed  approval,  of  the  Anglican  Church.  The 
unenthusiastic  response  of  Free  Church  laymen  to  the 
Lambeth  Conference  Encyclical  on  reunion  is,  I  think, 
due  in  a  large  measure  to  the  bad  record  of  bishops  in  the 
long  struggle  for  religious  liberty  in  England. 

I  am  afraid  the  general  public  takes  very  little  interest 
in  the  reports  of  Royal  Commissions,  and  none  whatever  in 
the  evidence.  But  when  I  had  to  report  the  sittings  of 
these  august  bodies  in  the  early  ’nineties  I  often  found  the 
proceedings  as  fascinating  as  a  cause  celebre  in  the  Law 
Courts.  The  oddest  of  odd  things  often  turn  up  in  these 
inquiries.  I  remember  that  when  Mr.  Frederick  Rogers 
(who,  if  anyone,  was  the  author  of  old  age  pensions)  was 
in  the  witness-box  of  the  Royal  Commission,  he  was 
insistent  that  there  should  be  no  character  test  of  old  age 
pensioners.  A  bishop  on  the  Commission  seemed  dis¬ 
tressed  over  this  laxity,  and  in  a  pained  tone  asked  the 
witness  if,  really,  he  would  give  an  old  age  pension  to  a 
prostitute.  “Most  certainly,  my  lord,”  Mr.  Rogers  (who 
was  a  good  Churchman)  answered  without  hesitation,  “if 
she  is  a  prostitute  at  the  age  of  sixty-five.”  Another 
bishop  who  sat  on  the  Birth-rate  Commission  turned  the 
tables  neatly  on  a  very  modern-minded  lady  witness,  an 


Religion  in  Politics  29 

unmarried  intellectual,  who  had  been  presenting  her  view 
that  an  unmarried  woman  who  had  a  child  to  satisfy  her 
maternal  instinct  ought  to  suffer  no  stigma.  The  bishop 
raised  his  eyebrows  and  quickly  insinuated  the  question  : 

“  May  I  ask,  Miss - if  you  practise  your  own  doctrine  ?  ” 

Before  the  Copyright  Commission  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer 
said  that  ninety-nine  out  of  a  hundred  Englishmen,  given 
the  choice  of  a  daily  dose  of  castor  oil  or  the  task  of  reading 
a  page  of  one  of  his  (Mr.  Spencer’s)  books,  would  reply  : 
“Pass  me  over  the  castor  oil.” 

The  most  smashing  cross-examination  of  a  witness  I 
ever  saw  (I  just  missed  Sir  Charles  Russell’s  immortal 
cross-examination  of  Richard  Pigott  before  the  Parnell 
Commission)  was  Mr.  Falconer’s  severe  handling  of  Mr. 
Lawson  in  the  Marconi  Committee.  For  two  or  three  days 
that  financial  journalist  was  kept  wriggling  like  a  worm  on 
a  hook  while  the  remorseless  investigator  probed  him  with 
searching  questions.  Mr.  Lawson  could  produce  no  sort 
of  evidence  that  would  stand  the  test  of  cross-examination 
to  show  that  Mr.  Lloyd  George  had  had  any  dealings  in 
Marconi  shares.  But  Mr.  Lawson  had  hardly  left  the 
witness  chair,  a  nerve-shattered  man,  before  an  admission 
was  made  in  the  Law  Courts  that  Mr.  Lloyd  George  had 
made  an  investment  in  American  Marconi  shares.  The 
capacity  of  even  a  Special  Parliamentary  Committee  to 
elucidate  all  the  facts  in  a  case  may  be  questioned.  The 
Marconi  Committee  might  have  completed  its  evidence  and 
presented  its  report  without  hearing  of  the  American 
Marconi  share  purchases  but  for  a  libel  action  which  was 
tried  simultaneously  in  the  Law  Courts  and  disclosed  the 
blazing  secret.  The  party  system  showed  its  worst  side 
over  the  Marconi  Committee  in  the  presentation  of  two  ex 
parte  reports  :  (i)  condemnatory  by  the  Conservatives,  and 
{2)  whitewashing  by  the  Liberals.  The  only  impartial 
report  by  Sir  Albert  Spicer,  as  chairman,  was  an  act  of 
supreme  courage  in  the  circumstances.  Sir  Albert  did  not 


30 


The  Best  I  Remember 


exonerate  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  from  blame,  but 
just  as  certainly  he  did  not  find  him  guilty  of  the  charges 
with  which  his  enemies  accused  him.  It  redounds  fo  Mr. 
Lloyd  George’s  credit  that  he  did  not  resent  Sir  Albert 
Spicer’s  judicial  report  upon  the  matter.  I  gather  that 
he  would  have  been  glad  if  the  whole  Committee  had 
adopted  it.  I  know  that  his  friendship  with  Sir  Albert 
remained  unaffected. 


CHAPTER  V 


COLLABORATING  WITH  W.  G.  GRACE 

My  happiest  days  in  journalism,  I  think,  were  the 
cricket  seasons  of  1890  and  1891,  when  I  was  writing 
descriptive  reports  of  cricket  in  London  for  the  Manchester 
Examiner,  and  following  the  Lancashire  team  on  its 
southern  tours.  A  day  in  the  Press  box  at  a  first  class 
county  match  is  still  a  long  drawn  out  ecstasy  to  me.  For 
a  time  I  was  thrown  among  cricketers,  amateur  and  profes¬ 
sional,  and  found  them  sterling,  healthy-minded,  large- 
hearted  men  with  scarcely  an  exception.  For  George 
Lohmann  I  had  a  great  affection.  But  the  cricketer  with 
whom  I  was  brought  into  closest  contact  was  the  incom¬ 
parable  W.  G.  Grace. 

I  spent  all  the  leisure  of  twelve  months,  some  years 
later,  working  in  collaboration  with  Dr.  Grace  on  his 
well-known  book,  “W.  G.  :  Cricketing  Reminiscences.” 
It  is  not  a  breach  of  faith  now  to  say  that  I  wrote  the 
book.  Grace  was  choke  full  of  cricketing  history,  experi¬ 
ence  and  reminiscences,  but  he  was  a  singularly  inarticulate 
man,  and  had  he  been  left  to  write  his  own  cricketing 
biography  it  would  never  have  seen  the  light.  My  friend 
Mr.  James  Bowden  (through  Mr.  Coulson  Kernahan) 
sought  my  co-operation  with  Grace,  who  had  entered  into 
an  agreement  with  him  to  produce  a  volume  of  reminis¬ 
cences  for  publication  in  his  jubilee  year.  It  had  seemed 
as  if  the  contract  would  expire  without  a  line  of  the  book 
having  been  written.  Grace  accepted  me  as  his  collabora¬ 
tor  with  the  utmost  heartiness,  and,  although  the  task 

31 


32 


The  Best  I  Remember 


of  getting  the  material  from  him  was  almost  heartbreaking, 
I  enjoyed  the  work  immensely.  My  plan  was  to  spend 
three  half-days  a  week  with  W.  G.  in  his  own  study — 
he  was  living  at  Sydenham  then — and  by  every  conceiv¬ 
able  artifice  that  an  experienced  interviewer  could  bring 
into  operation,  lure  him  into  a  flow  of  reminiscence. 
Many  days  I  drew  a  blank  and  came  away  with  scarcely 
sufficient  material  for  a  paragraph.  On  other  days  I 
managed  to  inveigle  him  into  a  reminiscent  vein,  and  he 
would  send  me  off  with  data  enough  for  one  or  two 
chapters. 

W.  G.  Grace’s  mind  functioned  oddly.  He  never 
stuck  to  any  train  of  recollection,  but  would  jump  from 
an  event  in  the  ’sixties  to  something  that  happened  in, 
say,  the  last  test  match.  Often  I  left  his  house  in  abso¬ 
lute  despair.  Once,  at  least,  I  asked  leave  to  abandon  the 
enterprise;  but  I  was  urged  to  persist.  I  remember  very 
distinctly  one  age-long  afternoon  when  I  was  trying  to 
get  out  of  W.  G.  something  of  the  psychology  of  a  bats¬ 
man  making  a  big  score  in  a  great  match.  All  that  he 
wanted  to  say  in  recording  some  dazzling  batting  feat  of 
his  own  was,  “Then  I  went  in  and  made  284.”  “Yes,” 
I  would  reply,  “but  that  is  not  good  enough.  People 
want  to  know  what  W.  G.  Grace  felt  like  when  he  was 
doing  it;  what  thoughts  he  had  and  what  the  whole  mental 
experience  of  a  big  innings  means  to  a  batsman.”  “I 
did  not  feel  anything;  I  had  too  much  to  do  to  watch  the 
bowling  and  see  how  the  fieldsmen  were  moved  about  to 
think  anything.”  The  very  best  that  I  could  get  out  of 
him  was  that  “some  days  a  batsman’s  eye  is  in  and  other 
days  it  is  not.  When  his  eye  is  in,  the  cricket  ball  seems 
the  size  of  a  football  and  he  can’t  miss  it.  When  his  eye 
isn’t  in  then  he  isn’t  in  long,  because  he’s  soon  bowled 
out.” 

I  failed  utterly,  I  confess,  to  draw  from  W.  G. 
anything  adequate  in  the  way  of  a  chapter  on  the  art  of 


Collaborating  with  W.  G.  Grace  33 

cricket  captaincy.  He  had  the  generalship  of  the  game 
by  instinct,  and,  in  his  autocratic  fashion,  was  a  sound 
captain  with  every  artifice  at  his  finger-tips.  But  he  had 
no  consciousness  of  what  he  did  know  in  that  department 
of  cricket  strategy — ^which,  it  must  be  remembered,  was 
an  empirical  matter  and  not  the  exact  science  to  which 
Australian  captaincy  has  reduced  it.  So  his  advice  to 
captains  in  his  reminiscences  is  poor  stuff.  I  could  get 
nothing  out  of  him  that  was  in  the  slightest  degree 
illuminating  or  helpful. 

Conscious  of  his  own  inarticulateness,  Grace  was  fear¬ 
fully  apprehensive  lest  I  should  put  into  his  reminiscences 
any  words  that  were  not  in  his  accustomed  vocabulary. 
One  day  in  running  through  a  chapter  I  had  written  and 
which  we  were  revising  together,  he  pulled  up  at  the  word 
“inimical.”  “No,”  he  said  firmly,  “that  word  can’t  go 
in.  Why,  if  that  went  into  the  book  I  should  have  the 
fellows  at  Lords  coming  to  me  in  the  pavilion  and 
saying,  ^  Look  here,  W.  G.,  where  did  you  get  that 
word  from  ?  ’  ” 

About  Dr.  W.  G.  Grace  there  was  something  indefin¬ 
able — like  the  simple  faith  of  a  child — ^which  arrested  and 
fascinated  me.  He  was  a  big  grown-up  boy,  just  what 
a  man  who  only  lived  when  he  was  in  the  open  air  might 
be  expected  to  be.  A  wonderful  kindliness  ran  through 
his  nature,  mingling  strangely  with  the  arbitrary  temper 
of  a  man  who  had  been  accustomed  to  be  dominant  over 
other  men. 

I 

His  temper  was  very  fiery — perhaps  gusty  is  a  better 
word — and  his  prejudices  ran  away  with  him.  He 
detested  Radicals  in  politics,  and  disliked  umpires  who 
had  ever  given  him  out  l.b.w.  I  asked  him  one  day  what 
he  thought  of  a  once  famous  Lancashire  bowler,  at  that 
time  ranking  as  a  first  class  umpire,  “I  don’t  want  to 
say  much  about  him  in  this  book,”  he  replied.  “He  gave 
me  out  l.b.w.  to  a  ball  that  broke  four  inches  when  I 


34 


The  Best  I  Remember 


was  just  ^  getting  my  eye  in  ’  at  the  Gentlemen  v.  Players 
match  at  the  Oval  in - ”  He  could  not  forget  that  crown¬ 

ing  offence.  Of  other  men  he  made  idols — they  could  do 
no  wrong.  “Ranji  ”  was  one  of  them.  So  were  Charles 
B.  Fry,  F.  S.  Jackson  and  Archie  MacLaren.  We  had 
warm  arguments  and  all  the  little  differences  that  collabora¬ 
tion  almost  necessarily  involves;  but  never  a  moment  of 
anger  disturbed  our  relations,  and  we  were  good  friends 
to  the  end  of  the  partnership,  and  afterwards. 

W.  G.  Grace  would  have  made  an  excellent  subject 
for  a  modern  psycho-analyst  who  might,  from  W.  G.’s 
subconscious  stores  of  forgotten  cricket  lore,  have  extracted 
for  us  a  classic  of  cricket  literature.  Reverting  to  W.G.’s 
choleric  temperament,  I  think  I  once  did  make  him  really 
cross.  It  was  when  I  flatly  refused  to  believe  his  state¬ 
ment  that  he  had  only  one  lung,  and  had,  in  fact,  had 
only  one  lung  since  his  childhood.  “Now  who,”  I  asked 
him  incredulously,  “is  going  to  believe  that?  ”  I  simply 
could  not  credit  it.  Grace  was,  for  the  moment,  nettled, 
and  then  he  said  rather  testily,  “I’m  not  going  to  have 
you  doubting  what  I  say;  I’ll  call  my  wife,  and  she’ll 
confirm  what  I  have  told  you.”  He  called  Mrs.  Grace, 
who  corroborated  W.  G.’s  story.  Then  I  apologized  and 
we  made  peace. 

While  I  was  engaged  with  Grace  on  his  reminiscences 
and  had  about  a  third  of  the  book  written  and  revised, 
the  publisher  entered  into  an  arrangement  with  Mr.  W.  M. 
Crook  (now  secretary  of  the  Home  Counties  Liberal 
Federation  and  a  great  authority  on  London  bird-life), 
who  was  then  editing  the  Echo,  for  serial  day  by  day 
publication  of  the  chapters.  I  was  horror-struck.  I 
gravely  doubted  my  capacity  to  keep  up  the  regular 
supply  of  “copy”;  but  serial  publication  was  actually 
starting  before  I  heard  of  the  contract.  The  Echo  got  a 
fine  fillip  to  its  circulation  from  Grace’s  reminiscences. 
One  day  I  was  with  my  friend  Mr.  F,  A.  Atkins  at 


Collaborating  with  W.  G.  Grace  35 

the  National  Liberal  Club  when  we  met  Mr.  W.  M. 
Crook  in  the  hall.  Mr.  Atkins  asked  him  if  he  was 
singing  : 

’  Grace,  ’tis  a  charming  sounds 
Harmonious  to  the  ear. 

Mr.  Crook  smiled  at  the  apposite  quotation;  but  a  few 
minutes  later  Mr.  Atkins  ejaculated :  Why  didn’t  I 

finish  the  quotation  ”  : 

Heaven  with  the  Echo  shall  resound, 

And  all  the  earth  shall  hear. 


CHAPTER  VI 


INTRODUCTION  TO  RELIGIOUS  JOURNALISM 

I  HAD  been  three  months  in  London  when  I  called  one 
day  at  the  Congregational  Union  office  in  the  Memorial 
Hall  to  seek  some  information  for  my  paper,  the  Manchester 
Examiner,  I  sent  in  my  card,  and  was  rather  overwhelmed 
by  the  kindness  shown  me  by  the  Rev.  D.  Burford  Hooke, 
then  acting  as  secretary  of  the  Union  during  Dr.  Hannay’s 
last  illness.  He  invited  me  to  join  him  at  tea  in  his  room, 
and  placed  a  wealth  of  good  copy  at  my  disposal.  I  do 
not  think  I  saw  Dr.  Burford  Hooke  again  until  the  next 
May  meetings  of  the  Congregational  Union,  when  he  came 
down  from  the  platform  to  the  Press  table  to  greet  me. 
Then  came  the  First  International  Congregational  Council 
held  in  the  then  newly  opened  King’s  Weigh  House 
Chapel  in  1891.  My  most  vivid  memory  of  the  Inter¬ 
national  Council  was  the  impression  made  upon  me  by 
Dr.  R.  W.  Dale,  who  was  its  president.  He  looked  so  ill 
and  at  times  had  such  a  ghastly  pallor  on  his  face  that 
one  might  have  imagined  that  he  was  dying  on  his  feet. 
From  the  Press  table  close  to  the  platform  I  could  see  the 
violent  palpitations  of  his  heart  under  his  coat.  Mrs. 
Dale,  sitting  in  the  gallery  close  to  the  pulpit  when  he  was 
delivering  his  presidential  address,  watched  him  anxiously 
— half  fearful  that  he  might  collapse  at  any  moment.  Only 
the  tremendous  will-power  which  was  so  characteristic  of 
Dr.  Dale  could  have  carried  a  man  through  such  an  ordeal 
in  such  a  state  of  physical  weakness. 

Indirectly  the  International  Council  opened  the  door 
for  me  into  religious  journalism.  I  am  not  sure  whether 

3h 


Introduction  to  Religious  Journalism  37 

I  ought  to  be  thankful  or  not.  In  the  monetary  sense  I 
have  perhaps  been  the  loser,  since  there  are  no  financial 
plums  for  a  religious  journalist.  But  after  thirty  years  in 
this  backwater  of  journalism  I  have  no  regrets  that  I  left 
the  main  stream,  whose  waters  nowadays  are  somewhat 
muddied. 

After  the  International  Council  I  frequently  called  on 
Dr.  Burford  Hooke  at  the  Memorial  Hall.  He  had  shown 
me  many  kindnesses,  and  when  he  acquired  the  Inde- 
pendent  and  Nonconformist  he  invited  me  to  be  his 
assistant  editor.  A  kindlier  man  never  breathed,  and  I 
can  never  forget  my  obligations  to  him.  At  the  end  of 
my  first  month  as  his  assistant  editor  Dr.  Burford  Hooke 
gave  me  a  cheque  which  was  made  out  for  two  pounds 
ten  shillings  more  than  I  was  entitled  to  receive  under 
our  agreement.  I  pointed  out  that  he  had  made  a  mistake. 
“Oh,  no,”  he  said.  “I  find  you  are  more  valuable  than 
I  thought  you  would  be,  and  I’ve  added  ;^30  a  year  to 
the  salary  we  agreed  upon.”  Three  months  later  he 
repeated  the  increment,  and  I  believe  that  if  the  finances 
of  the  paper  had  allowed  it  he  would  have  made  a  habit 
of  expanding  my  salary  every  three  months.  The  psy¬ 
chological  influence  of  these  unsolicited  increments  of 
salary  may  have  repaid  Dr.  Burford  Hooke,  for  they 
seemed  to  multiply  my  capacity  for  work. 

One  of  Dr.  Burford  Hooke’s  greatest  services  to  me 
was  to  dispatch  me  on  long  tours,  as  a  special  correspon¬ 
dent,  into  almost  every  quarter  of  England  to  get  ac¬ 
quainted  with  Congregational  ministers  and  see  what 
Congregational  churches  were  doing.  I  visited  almost  all 
the  great  centres  of  population — north,  south,  east  and 
west — in  this  way,  and  accumulated  stores  of  invaluable 
information  about  men  and  churches.  In  this  way  I  met, 
in  their  early  years  of  ministry,  many  of  the  men  who  are 
now  leaders  in  Free  Church  life.  Perhaps  my  most 
cherished  memory  of  those  visits  is  of  one  I  paid  in  1893 


The  Best  I  Remember 


38 

to  the  Rev.  F.  A.  Russell,  then  at  York.  We  became 
very  intimate  friends,  and  the  friendship  lasted  till 
Russell’s  death  in  1921.  Neither  of  us  was  systematic  in 
our  private  correspondence,  but  we  always  met  just  at  the 
stage  where  we  last  parted.  Literally  we  almost  knew 
each  other’s  bank  balances — which  were  never  large  with 
either  of  us.  I  was  walking  in  York  with  Russell  when 
he  had  his  first  seizure  with  the  bronchial  asthma  to  which 
afterwards  he  was  always  a  martyr.  It  completely  dis¬ 
torted  his  life.  Frederick  Russell  was  a  very  choice  spirit. 
His  childhood  had  been  clouded  by  bitter  experiences,  but 
he  was  never  soured  by  that.  Indeed,  I  think  it  deepened 
his  capacity  for  human  sympathy.  I  never  met  a  bookman 
whose  reading  was  more  all-embracing.  It  was  prodigious. 

Another  memory  of  those  visits  arranged  by  Dr. 
Burford  Hooke  is  of  a  day  spent  with  the  saintly  Dr. 
Henry  R.  Reynolds  at  Cheshunt  College.  Dr.  Reynolds 
was  getting  old  and  his  force  was  far  spent,  but  I  never 
forget  his  exquisite  courtliness  of  manner  and  his  extreme 
courtesy  to  me,  though  I  was  a  mere  boy.  That  passing 
association  with  Dr.  Reynolds  adds  to  my  joy  to-day  in 
being  one  of  the  governors  of  his  old  college  now  located 
at  Cambridge. 

I  was  by  no  means  the  only  youngster  to  whom  Dr. 
Burford  Hooke  held  out  a  friendly  and  helpful  hand. 
There  was  quite  a  long  procession  of  us — Hooke’s  boys, 
we  called  ourselves — every  one  of  whom,  in  one  way  or 
another.  Dr.  Burford  Hooke  helped  to  get  a  foot  on  the 
ladder.  I  once  heard  Sir  James  M.  Barrie  pay  a  tribute 
to  Mr.  Frederick  Greenwood,  the  famous  editor  of  the 
St,  James*  Gazette  and  a  great  friend  of  neophytes  in 
journalism.  Barrie  said  he  could  never  say  how  much  he 
owed  to  Greenwood.  “He  invented  me,”  he  said  in  that 
soft  fascinating  drawl  of  his.  “I  bought  my  first  silk  hat 
to  impress  him.  There  is  a  long  row  of  us,  all  in  our 
first  silk  hats  and  our  hearts  in  our  mouths,  who  owe 


Introduction  to  Religious  Journalism  39 

everything  to  Greenwood.  Those  silk  hats  are  old  and 
battered  now,  Mr.  Greenwood,  but  dying  they  salute  you.” 
I  feel  towards  Dr.  Burford  Hooke  something  like  Sir 
James  Barrie  felt  towards  Frederick  Greenwood,  and  I 
could  make  a  list  of  men  who  share  my  sense  of  obligation 
to  him.  He  was  a  great  encourager  of  youth. 

I  owed  much,  too,  in  those  early  days  to  a  very 
wonderful  old  man,  Mr.  Charles  S.  Miall,  who  was  a 
colleague  with  me  on  the  Independent  and  Nonconformist 
when  Mr.  Hooke  edited  it,  and  later  when  I  became  its 
managing  editor  with  Dr.  Guinness  Rogers  as  consulting 
editor.  Mr.  Miall  was  a  brother  of  Edward  Miall  who 
founded  the  Nonconformist,  created  the  Liberation 
Society,  and  once  so  nettled  Mr.  Gladstone  in  the  House 
of  Commons  by  saying  that  his  conscience  would  not  allow 
him  to  vote  for  a  course  the  Liberal  leader  was  pursuing, 
that  the  G.O.M.  hotly  told  him,  “for  God’s  sake,  rather 
than  outrage  your  conscience,  vote  against  me.”  Mr. 
Charles  Miall  was  over  seventy  when  I  became  his  col¬ 
league.  He  was  hale  and  alert,  and  his  memory  (except  for 
names)  was  amazingly  retentive.  His  range  of  information 
was  so  wide  that  talking  with  him  was  like  consulting  an 
encyclopaedia.  He  indexed  himself  for  my  benefit,  and 
would  go  to  endless  trouble  to  ply  me  with  data  about 
men  and  movements  that  I  wanted  to  possess  and  to  which 
no  books  gave  access.  Mr.  Miall  belonged  to  the  old 
school  of  sedate  journalism.  He  could  only  do  his  work 
in  his  own  way,  and  in  his  own  time.  Left  to  himself, 
his  output  of  copy  was  vast  and  up  to  a  high  standard. 
But  the  slightest  disturbance  of  his  routine  of  habit  flurried 
him  and  left  him  sterile.  His  temper  was  never  ruffled, 
and  his  benevolent  spirit  survived  every  jolt.  In  his  early 
days  in  London  Mr.  Charles  Miall  had  shared  lodgings 
with  Herbert  Spencer,  the  philosopher,  of  whom  he  had 
some  curious  memories  to  recount — especially  of  his  dis¬ 
taste  for  music.  I  believe  it  was  Mr.  Charles  Miall  who 

D 


40 


The  Best  I  Remember 


encouraged  Herbert  Spencer  to  write  his  first  series  of 
essays.  They  were  on  the  true  sphere  of  government,  and 
were  published  in  the  Nonconformist. 

Dr.  R.  W.  Dale  had  a  great  regard  for  Mr.  Charles 
Miall,  and  when  in  London — ^which  was  seldom  in  those 
days — he  dropped  in  once  or  twice  at  the  Independent  and 
Nonconformist  office  to  smoke  a  pipe  with  Mr.  Miall.  I 
remember  Mr.  Miall  saying  to  Dr.  Dale  :  “You  still  smoke, 
then?”  “Yes,  I  still  smoke,”  Dr.  Dale  replied.  “Tell 
me,  how  much  do  you  smoke  a  week,  Mr.  Miall  ?  ”  “I 
suppose  about  two  ounces  a  week,”  Mr.  Miall  answered. 
“Two  ounces,”  gasped  Dr.  Dale,  “only  two  ounces  !  Tve 
been  cutting  down  my  tobacco  allowance  lately ;  but  I  find 
it  a  terrible  trial  to  keep  it  within  half  a  pound  a  week.” 
Dr.  Dale  and  Mr.  Miall  soon  had  the  editorial  office  thick 
with  tobacco  smoke.  Dr.  Burford  Hooke  disliked  the 
smell  of  tobacco  in  the  office,  but  he  somehow  contrived  not 
even  to  notice  the  smell  of  Dr.  Dale’s  full-flavoured 
tobacco. 

No  Free  Church  leader  since  Dr.  Dale  has  exercised 
quite  the  supreme  authority  as  a  political  Dissenter  that  he 
enjoyed  until  he  followed  Mr.  Chamberlain  into  the  Liberal 
Unionist  camp.  The  political  chasm  caused  Dr.  Dale  to 
stand  aloof  from  the  Congregational  Union  platform,  and 
he  was  chary  about  being  drawn  into  the  Free  Church 
Council  movement.  When  he  was  President  of  the  Bir¬ 
mingham  Free  Church  Council  he  vetoed  any  action  that 
savoured  of  politics.  A  cartoon  that  appeared  in  one  of  the 
papers  representing  Dr.  Dale  addressing  Birmingham 
Nonconformists  in  the  words:  “Hush,  no  politics;  I  dine 
to-night  at  Highbury,”  caused  Dr.  Dale  real  irritation. 
Dr.  Dale  and  Dr.  Guinness  Rogers  remained  fast  friends 
to  the  end;  but  after  the  Home  Rule  split  there  was  a 
certain  gulf  fixed.  It  was  not  the  mere  fact  that  they 
differed,  but  that  there  was  a  wide  field  of  life  which  was 
not  common  ground  to  them.  Nonconformity  was  hope- 


Introduction  to  Religious  Journalism  41 

lessly  divided  on  Irish  Home  Rule,  and  many  personal 
friendships  among  eminent  Free  Church  ministers  were 
sorely  strained  and  even  sundered. 

Not  until  the  Balfour  Education  Act  of  1901  (which  Mr. 
Chamberlain  warned  Mr.  Balfour  would  reunite  Noncon¬ 
formity  to  Liberalism)  were  the  Free  Churches  even 
approximately  solid  in  party  allegiance.  The  unity 
realized  in  1906  lasted  just  twelve  years,  and  then  Mr. 
Lloyd  George  by  his  khaki  election  in  1918  shattered  Free 
Church  solidarity  even  more  effectively  than  Mr.  Gladstone 
did  in  1886.  The  political  discord  in  the  Free  Church 
camp  is  more  profound,  if  less  strident,  now  than  it  was  in 
1886,  and  I  fancy  even  Dr.  Dale,  who  retained  his  essential 
Liberalism,  would  have  been  shocked  to  think  that  in  1919 
the  treasurer  of  the  Congregational  Union  of  England  and 
Wales  headed  the  nomination  paper  of  a  Conservative 
candidate  at  a  bye-election.  Dr.  Guinness  Rogers  would 
have  collapsed  in  a  fit. 


CHAPTER  VII 


DR.  GUINNESS  ROGERS 

Dr.  guinness  ROGERS  was  past  his  prime  when  I 
became  closely  associated  with  him  on  the  Indepen¬ 
dent  and  Nonconformist — he  as  consulting  editor  and  I  as 
managing  editor.  He  was  over  seventy,  and  I  was  under 
thirty;  but  our  intimate  association,  extending  over  five 
years,  was  of  the  happiest  character.  Moreover,  it  was 
without  capitulation  on  either  side.  Dr.  Rogers  was  a 
typical  Irishman — impulsive,  imperious,  and  explosive,  but 
if  he  barked  he  never  bit.  My  most  abiding  impression  is 
of  his  tenderness  and  abounding  kindness  of  heart.  I  felt 
towards  him  as  a  man  feels  towards  a  father,  and  he  treated 
me  as  a  son.  Only  once  had  we  a  moment  of  friction — 
though  we  differed,  in  a  perfectly  friendly  way,  a  hundred 
limes.  The  one  occasion  of  real  difference  arose  out  of  my 
publication  in  the  Independent  and  Nonconformist,  without 
consulting  him,  of  a  letter  by  the  Rev.  C.  Silvester  Horne, 
controverting  certain  views  expressed  by  Dr.  Rogers  in  a 
signed  article  in  the  previous  week’s  paper.  Mr.  Silvester 
Horne  had  made  “hay  ”  of  Dr.  Rogers’s  contentions,  and  I 
think  the  old  gentleman  knew  it.  He  argued  testily  that 
Mr.  Silvester  Horne’s  letter  ought  to  have  been  put  into 
the  waste-paper  basket.  I  insisted  that  a  responsible  and 
eminent  Congregational  minister  had  a  right  to  be  heard, 
especially  as  he  was  expressing  the  opinions  of  the  younger 
generation  against  those  of  one  of  the  older  school.  But 
Dr.  Rogers  would  not  be  convinced.  He  was  angry,  and 
I  left  him  rather  disconcerted  by  the  encounter.  But  the 
last  post  that  same  day  brought  me,  at  home,  a  letter 

42 


43 


Dr.  Guinness  Rogers 

written  in  Dr.  Rogers’s  own  crabbed  handwriting  express¬ 
ing  deep  contrition  for  his  irritability  in  the  morning  and 
begging  me  to  forget  the  episode.  He  added  that  it  had 
been  a  joy  to  him  in  his  old  age  to  find  that  he  could  work 
harmoniously  with  a  man  so  much  his  junior,  and  he  hoped 
that  what  had  occurred  in  the  morning  would  not  in  the 
least  disturb  the  good  feeling  between  us.  This  letter 
embarrassed  me  almost  as  much  as  the  friction  earlier  in 
the  day  had  distressed  me.  When  next  we  met  it  was 
glad,  confident  morning  again,  and  as  long  as  we  were 
associated  no  clouds  crossed  the  horizon . 

On  the  day  Dr.  Dale  died  I  found  Dr.  Rogers  in  a 
miserable  state.  The  tears  rolled  down  his  cheeks  as  he 
spoke  of  his  old  friend.  There  was  a  similarly  distressing 
scene  when  I  told  Dr.  Rogers  of  the  sudden  death  of  Dr. 
Charles  Albert  Berry.  Upon  his  friends  Dr.  Rogers 
poured  out  a  wealth  of  love,  and  as  he  grew  older  and 
friend  after  friend  passed  beyond  the  veil  a  drear  sense 
of  loneliness  weighed  heavily  upon  him.  One  day  when  I 
congratulated  him  upon  his  physical  and  mental  vigour  at 
the  age  of  eighty  he  sighed  deeply,  and  in  his  sonorous 
voice  quoted  the  Psalm  : 

“The  days  of  our  years  are  threescore  years  and  ten; 
and  if  by  reason  of  strength  they  be  fourscore  years,  yet 
is  their  strength  labour  and  sorrow.” 

The  old  man’s  lips  quivered  and  his  voice  shook  as 
he  recited  the  familiar  words,  and  then  he  added:  “It’s 
a  terribly  trying  experience  to  live  past  one’s  own  genera¬ 
tion  and  to  be  left  behind  by  all  one’s  friends.”  Then, 
with  an  obvious  effort,  he  brushed  aside  his  melancholy, 
and  in  a  few  minutes  he  was  plunged  in  the  affairs  of  the 
hour — as  alert  and  vibrant  as  a  man  of  forty. 

At  his  best  Dr.  Guinness  Rogers  was  a  really  mighty 
orator.  He  belonged  to  the  Victorian  school  of  rhetori¬ 
cians,  and  an  excited  admirer  who  came  out  of  a  meeting 
declaring  that  “Rogers’s  speech  was  grand — all  perora- 


44 


The  Best  I  Remember 


tions,”  passed  a  shrewd  if  unconscious  criticism  upon  his 
cardinal  weakness.  Men  of  a  younger  school  called  Dr. 
Rogers  “Boanerges,”  but  it  was  said  affectionately,  with¬ 
out  a  suggestion  of  derision.  When  he  spoke  at  the 
Congregational  Union  in  the  ^nineties  we  counted  the  sen¬ 
tences  till  the  name  of  Gladstone  came.  If  Dr.  Rogers 
felt  he  was  getting  “well  away  off  the  tee  ”  as  he  began 
a  speech  we  might  have  to  wait  five  minutes  for  the  magic 
name,  but  if  he  drew  no  cheer  by  his  opening  sentence  we 
could  lay  our  lives  that  the  second  sentence  would  bring 
its  allusion  to  “that  noble  Christian  statesman,  William 
Ewart  Gladstone.”  Then  the  cheers  came,  the  orator 
caught  fire,  and  was  “off.”  The  device  was  rarely  known 
to  fail.  Dr.  Guinness  Rogers  was  delighted  when  the 
Prince  of  Wales  (King  Edward),  presiding  at  a  Hospital 
Committee  meeting,  remarked  that  some  point  which  had 
been  raised  on  a  religious  question  might  be  referred  to 
“my  friend  Dr.  Guinness  Rogers  and  the  Bishop  of 
London,  who  would  settle  it  in  ten  minutes.”  But  the 
very  proudest  moment  in  Guinness  Rogers’s  life  was  when 
Mr.  Gladstone  stood  on  the  veranda  of  his  house  at 
Clapham  and  addressed  the  crowd  gathered  outside. 

On  his  mother’s  side  Dr.  Rogers  was  related  to  the 
Guinness  family  of  brewers,  and  he  named  his  eldest  son 
Arthur  Guinness  Rogers  after  his  Irish  relative.  The  son, 
like  all  three  of  Dr.  Rogers’s  sons,  entered  the  Congre¬ 
gational  Ministry.  He  went  to  America  for  some  years 
and  returned  with  a  Doctor  of  Divinity  degree.  Some 
confusion  arose  through  there  being  two  Dr.  Guinness 
Rogerses  in  English  Congregationalism,  and  one  day 
Rogers  phe  broached  the  matter  to  Rogers  fils  with  a 
view  to  obviating  the  little  difficulty. 

“Oh,  all  right,  father,”  said  Dr.  Arthur  Guinness 
Rogers,  “we  needn’t  make  any  bones  about  that.  I’ll  be 
just  Dr.  Arthur  G.  Rogers  and  you  can  stick  to  the 
brewery.” 


45 


Dr.  Guinness  Rogers 

From  Dr.  Guinness  Rogers  I  heard  a  story  illustrating 
the  quite  wonderful  affection  that  subsisted  between  Sir 
William  Harcourt  and  his  son  Lulu  (later  Lord  Harcourt). 
Sir  William  was  a  guest  along  with  Dr.  Rogers  at  a  dinner 
given  by  Lord  Tweedmouth.  When  the  cigars  were 
passed  round  Sir  William  Harcourt  declined  one.  His 
host  expressed  surprise,  knowing  that  Sir  William  was 
very  fond  of  a  good  cigar. 

“I’m  not  smoking  just  now,”  explained  Sir  William. 
“The  fact  is  that  Lulu  is  suffering  from  a  little  throat 
trouble,  and  has  been  ordered  not  to  smoke  for  a  time. 
It  is  a  fearful  deprivation  to  him,  and  I  do  not  like  to 
make  it  harder  for  him  by  smelling  of  tobacco  myself. 
So  I’m  not  smoking  until  Lulu  is  allowed  to  smoke  again.” 

Dr.  Guinness  Rogers  was  brought  up  before  the  total 
abstinence  movement  had  taken  any  firm  hold  on  the  Con¬ 
gregational  Ministry.  He  could  remember  when,  at  the 
early  meetings  of  the  Congregational  Union,  a  barrel  of 
beer  and  a  joint  of  cold  beef  were  always  placed  on  a 
sideboard  at  the  back  of  the  hall  for  delegates  to  refresh 
themselves.  When  Dr.  Newman  Hall  was  eighty  he  was 
asked  to  what  he  attributed  his  longevity.  “To  the  fact,” 
he  replied,  “that  I  have  always  been  a  teetotaller.” 

A  few  weeks  later  Dr.  Rogers,  just  after  making  a  big 
speech  that  had  tumultuously  moved  a  great  meeting,  was 
met  by  Hugh  Price  Hughes,  who  was  a  strenuous  cam¬ 
paigner  for  total  abstinence,  and  who  asked  : 

“ How  do  you  account  for  your  longevity,  Rogers?  ” 

“Because  I’ve  never  been  a  teetotaller,”  retorted 
Guinness  Rogers,  laughing  loudly. 

Near  the  end  of  his  life  Dr.  Rogers  told  me,  however, 
that  if  he  had  been  beginning  life  afresh  he  would  be  a 
teetotaller  and  would  take  to  the  temperance  platform. 

Dr.  Rogers  was  to  the  last  a  very  hard  reader,  and  he 
was  catholic  in  his  tastes,  though  biographies  of  politicians 
and  ecclesiastics  were  his  favourite  reading.  But  he  liked 


46  The  Best  I  Remember 

novels — sloppy  novels;  even  penny  novelettes  did  not 
come  amiss.  I  remember  going  with  him  to  Oxford  once. 
At  Paddington  he  asked  me  to  get  him  the  Contemporary 
Reviem — if  it  was  out— and  the  “Bow  Bells”  and  “Prin¬ 
cess  ”  Novelettes.  I  got  all  three,  and  he  sandwiched  the 
Contemporary  between  the  penny  dreadfuls.  Even  minor 
poetry,  if  it  came  his  way,  was  welcome  to  Dr,  Rogers. 
He  had  a  fine  library  with  a  strong  element  of  patristic 
literature  and  the  Puritan  Fathers,  but  nothing  in  print 
came  amiss  to  him.  He  was  voracious. 

When  I  was  managing  editor  of  the  Independent  and 
Nonconformist  Dr.  T.  J.  Macnamara  was  editing  the 
Schoolmaster,  and  both  papers  were  printed  by  the  same 
firm.  Moreover,  the  two  papers  were  set  up  in  the  same 
composing  room  and  under  the  same  foreman.  Dr.  Mac¬ 
namara  and  I  never  met  in  those  days — though  we  met 
often  enough  in  later  years,  chiefly  on  the  golf  course — 
but  that  foreman  printer  formed  a  curious  link  between  us. 
He  was  a  dour  Scot,  Bennett  by  name,  a  first-rate  com¬ 
posing-room  “clicker”  with  a  high  sense  of  conscientious¬ 
ness.  He  played  Macnamara  off  against  me  and  played 
me  off  against  Macnamara.  The  Independent  had  to  be 
got  to  press  before  tHe  Schoolmaster,  If  my  proofs  were 
late,  Bennett  always  blamed  Macnamara  for  rushing 
Schoolmaster  “copy”  upon  him;  and  if  Schoolmaster 
proofs  were  delayed,  Macnamara  was  told  that  Porritt 
hung  up  everything  by  keeping  the  Independent  back  till 
the  last  moment.  Through  Bennett  I  got  to  picture  Dr. 
Macnamara  as  a  ravening  wolf  of  whom  his  poor  printer 
stood  in  mortal  dread;  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  Mac¬ 
namara,  through  Bennett,  visualized  me  as  a  ghoul  who 
was  bxfnging  his  printer’s  grey  hairs  in  sorrow  to  the 
grave. 

Bennett  hated  the  sight  of  Dr.  Guinness  Rogers’s 
cramped  handwriting,  and  the  compositors  loathed  it. 
When  an  article  by  Dr.  Rogers  was  being  given  out  in 


47 


Dr.  Guinness  Rogers 

“takes  ”  to  the  compositors  Bennett  was  always  in  a  state 
of  fevered  anxiety.  Rather  than  come  up  to  the  foreman’s 
desk  to  take  a  page  of  Dr.  Rogers’s  “copy  ”  the  com¬ 
positors  would  “ca’  canny”  on  their  previous  “takes.” 
They  were  paid  according  to  their  production  in  those 
days,  but  they  preferred  to  lose  money  rather  than  face 
that  terrible  calligraphy.  Once,  Bennett,  who  was  nothing 
if  not  resourceful,  got  over  this  recurring  difficulty  with 
Dr.  Rogers’s  “copy.”  I  sent  him  a  long  signed  article 
without  reading  it,  but  was  surprised  on  receiving  the 
proof  (on  the  very  eve  of  going  to  press)  that  the  article 
fell  far  below  my  estimate  of  the  space  it  would  require. 
Inquiry  led  to  the  discovery  that  Bennett  had  cut  out  the 
middle  of  the  article  (discarding  three  pages  of  MS). 
Naturally  I  was  indignant,  but  Bennett  was  quite  imper¬ 
turbable.  “It’s  improved  the  article,”  he  said.  And 
perhaps  it  had.  The  oddest  part  of  the  story  is  that  Dr. 
Guinness  Rogers  never  noticed  the  omission.  But  Bennett 
never  attempted  that  trick  again  on  me. 

On  second  thoughts  I  am  very  doubtful  whether  Dr. 
Guinness  Rogers  would  have  been  greatly  concerned  even 
if  he  had  noticed  that  his  leading  article  had  been  ruth¬ 
lessly  curtailed.  I  often  cut  his  “copy”  severely,  and  he 
was  never  resentful.  An  easier  man  to  work  with — once 
one  understood  him — I  could  hardly  imagine.  When  he 
wrote  his  autobiography  Dr.  Guinness  Rogers  exceeded  by 
30,000  words  the  length  that  the  publishers  had  laid  down  as 
the  maximum.  He  finished  the  MS.  just  as  he  was  leaving 
for  a  holiday  in  Scotland.  He  handed  the  typescript  over 
to  me  in  his  study  at  Clapham  Common.  I  saw  at  once 
that  it  would  have  to  be  reduced  by  30,000  words. 

“If  that  is  so,”  said  Dr.  Guinness  Rogers,  “I  wish  you 
would  do  it  for  me.  Take  the  manuscript  away,  cut  it 
down  to  the  proper  length,  and  hand  it  over  to  the 
publishers.” 

I  cannot  say  J  relished  having  such  a  task  thrust  upon 


48  The  Best  I  Remember 

me,  but  I  did  it.  I  blue-pencilled  out  some  of  Dr.  Rogers’s 
most  cherished  recollections  and  deleted  page  after  page 
of  the  typewritten  script.  He  saw  the  book  next  in  page 
proofs,  and  when  I  met  him  on  his  return  from  Scotland 
he  told  me  that  he  had  been  puzzled  to  recall  what  I  had 
left  out.  A  man  who  uncomplainingly  submits  to  his 
autobiography  being  chopped  about  by  a  man  of  less  than 
half  his  age  must  have  some  of  the  qualities  of  a  saint. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


C.  SILVESTER  HORNE 

Greatest  among  all  the  joys  of  friendship  that  I 
have  had  in  life  was  the  joy  of  knowing,  pretty  intim¬ 
ately,  Charles  Silvester  Horne.  When  I  was  acting  as  man- 
aging  editor  of  the  Independent  and  Nonconformist,  Mr. 
Silvester  Horne,  then  at  Kensington  Chapel,  contributed  a 
regular  article  for  young  people.  I  say  regular;  but  it  was 
anything  but  regular.  Horne’s  contribution  could  never 
even  be  relied  upon  to  come  at  all.  Whenever  he  sent  in  a 
belated  article  he  sent  an  apology  too.  I  wish  I  had  pre¬ 
served  those  letters.  They  were  always  delicious  in 
humour — a  whimsical  amalgam  of  mock  contrition  and 
on-my-oath  sort  of  promises  of  amendment  in  the  matter 
of  regularity.  After  a  time  I  gave  up  all  hope  of  ever 
getting  Horne  to  supply  his  article  at  any  fixed  interval — 
weekly,  fortnightly,  or  monthly.  I  was  just  grateful 
whenever  one  came. 

In  his  Kensington  days — indeed  all  his  life — Silvester 
Horne  was  far  too  much  of  a  nomad  to  write  regularly  for 
the  Press.  We  used  to  tease  him  for  his  constitutional 
incapacity  to  sleep  two  consecutive  nights  in  the  same  bed. 
When  he  went  to  Whitefields  he  became  more  of  a  vagrant 
than  ever;  and  Sunday  was  almost  the  only  day  of  the 
week  when  he  was  visible  in  London.  If  Silvester  Horne 
had  not  been  a  great  preacher-evangelist  he  might  have 
been  a  great  journalist.  He  had  the  journalistic  nous, 
and  he  loved  to  write.  His  father  had  been  the  editor  of 
a  country  paper,  and  Silvester  Horne  inherited  the  instinct. 
Of  the  London  Signal — the  monthly  he  started  at  White- 

49 


50 


The  Best  I  Remember 


fields — he  was  immensely  proud;  and  if  any  journalistic 
subject  was  being  talked  about  in  his  presence,  he  would 
interpose  with,  “As  editor  of  the  London  Signal,  I 

think - ”  and  his  laughing  eyes  would  be  homes  of 

merriment.  The  Signal  was  an  amateur  product,  but  no 
professional  journalist  wanted  to  pick  holes  in  it.  Horne 
practically  wrote  it  all,  and  generally  wrote,  too,  at  the 
penultimate  moment  when  the  printing  machine  was  wait¬ 
ing.  Generally  the  best  journalism  is  so  produced.  What 
an  editor  of  a  London  daily  Silvester  Horne  might  have 
been,  provided  with  a  capable  managing  editor !  I  some¬ 
times  thought  that  with  Silvester  Horne  in  its  editorial 
chair  the  Tribune  might  have  been  a  sort  of  'Man-- 
Chester  Guardian  for  southern  Liberalism.  It  had  magni¬ 
ficent  features,  but  lacked  just  the  touch  of  incandescence 
a  man  of  Silvester  Horne’s  quality  might  have  given 
to  it. 

There  used  to  hang  just  outside  the  vestry  door  at 
Whitefields  a  full-length  portrait  of  Silvester  Horne 
painted  in  his  Kensington  days.  It  was  the  portrait  of 
an  ethereal  youth,  slim  in  body,  spirituel  in  expression, 
and — ^well,  an  excellent  portrait  of  the  Silvester  Horne  I 
knew  in  his  early  Kensington  days.  But  visitors  to 
Whitefields  often  failed  to  recognize  in  that  portrait  the 
Silvester  Horne  they  knew,  the  robust,  fighting  knight- 
errant  who  only  found  his  real  self  when  he  moved  to 
Tottenham  Court  Road.  Horne  had  found  the  Kensing¬ 
ton  saints  rather  stuffy;  but  he  loved  the  vagabonds  of 
central  London.  And  he  liked  to  do  things  audaciously. 
How  he  chuckled  when  he  got  a  public-house  closed  and 
hired  its  bar  parlour  for  a  Sunday  school  class-room  !  And 
what  joy  he  experienced  when  a  generous  friend  bought 
up  a  disreputable  house  at  the  back  of  Whitefields — a  house 
associated  with  a  nauseous  murder — and  Horne  was 
allowed  to  convert  it  into  a  model  day- nursery  ! 

One  of  the  many  undertakings  in  which  I  co-operated 


C.  Silvester  Horne 


51 


with  Silvester  Horne  was  a  campaign  to  get  Free  Church¬ 
men  to  stand  as  Liberal  candidates  in  the  general  election 
of  1906.  The  Balfour  Education  Acts  had  inflamed  Non¬ 
conformity,  and  for  the  first  time  since  Mr.  Gladstone’s 
Home  Rule  Bill  of  1886  Nonconformists  were  solidly 
welded  together  against  what  they  regarded  as  a  monstrous 
invasion  of  their  rights.  Silvester  Horne  had  been  in  the 
vanguard  of  the  fight  against  the  Education  Acts,  and  he 
had  passively  resisted  it  by  refusing  to  pay  the  new  educa¬ 
tion  rates;  but  he  felt  the  urgent  necessity  of  securing  a 
strong  Free  Church  element  in  the  next  Parliament  to 
insist  on  the  repeal  or  amendment  of  the  obnoxious  Acts. 
The  return  of  a  Liberal  Government  was  a  certainty;  but 
Horne  was  afraid  that  the  main  election  issue  would  be 
Mr.  Chamberlain’s  Tariff  Reform,  and  he  suspected,  I 
think,  that  some  Liberals,  though  sound  Free  Traders, 
might  shirk  a  real  fight  on  education. 

When  we  were  playing  golf  one  day  at  Mitcham,  Horne 
suddenly  asked  me,  “Don’t  you  think  the  Free  Churches 
ought  to  put  up  a  hundred  candidates  at  the  next  elec¬ 
tion  ? ’’  “I  suppose  you  mean  to  make  sure  of  getting 
a  good  Education  Act,”  I  replied.  “Exactly,”  answered 
Horne,  “if  we  are  not  represented  by  our  own  people  we 
may  get  ‘  let  down.’  ”  The  upshot  of  our  talk  was  that 
(through  the  Christian  World,  the  proprietors  of  which 
led  off  with  a  contribution  of  ^£500)  a  campaign  fund  was 
raised  to  help  Free  Church  candidates  at  the  election. 
Silvester  Horne  used  his  influence  to  the  uttermost  to 
persuade  Free  Churchmen  who  might  otherwise  have  stood 
aloof  to  become  candidates.  When  the  scheme  was  well 
in  progress  I  went,  at  Silvester  Horne’s  suggestion,  to  see 
Mr.  Herbert  Gladstone,  who  was  then  chief  Liberal  whip, 
to  ascertain  what  constituencies  were  still  without  candi¬ 
dates,  and  to  offer  to  provide  some  Free  Churchmen  to 
fight  what  might  be  regarded  as  forlorn  hope  seats.  Mr. 
Gladstone  was  not  enthusiastic.  My  impression  was  that 


52 


The  Best  I  Remember 


as  chief  whip  he  did  not  want  to  be  encumbered  with  men 
with  bees  in  their  bonnets  over  one  issue.  Naturally  his 
ideal  candidate  would  be  a  thorough-going  party  Liberal 
who  would  obey  the  crack  of  the  whip  on  any  and  every 
question.  The  secretary  of  the  National  Free  Church 
Council  (Rev.  Thomas  Law)  came  into  the  Free  Church 
candidate  campaign  at  this  stage,  and  the  Liberal  whip’s 
department  changed  its  attitude  and  thenceforward  wel¬ 
comed  our  crusade. 

In  the  autumn  of  1905  I  communicated  on  behalf  of 
the  Christian  World  with  every  prospective  Liberal  candi¬ 
date,  seeking  for  a  specific  declaration  of  his  views  on  the 
Education  Act.  I  sent  out  a  sort  of  “Who’s  Who” 
schedule  of  inquiries,  one  of  which  was,  “Are  you  a  Free 
Churchman  ?  ”  The  replies  were  a  source  of  infinite 
amusement.  It  was  perfectly  astonishing  to  find  how 
eager  those  Liberal  candidates  of  1905  were  to  claim  the 
slightest  possible  probable  association  with  the  Free 
Churches.  Men  who  had  always  relied  on  their  wives’ 
church  membership  to  get  them  into  heaven  woke  up  to 
the  political  advantage  for  the  moment  of  having  some 
slender  link  with  Methodism,  or  Congregationalism,  or 
Presbyterianism.  To  resist  a  spasm  of  cynicism  was  im¬ 
possible  in  reading  the  answers  to  that  questionnaire.  I 
link  that  experience  of  the  1906  election  with  the  story  of 
a  politician  who  went  down  to  a  constituency  with  a  view 
to  being  selected  as  its  candidate  for  a  bye-election.  He 
addressed  a  meeting  of  the  electors,  and  sought,  through 
his  speech,  to  discover  the  prevailing  religious  tendency 
of  the  constituency.  “My  great  grandfather,”  he  said, 
was  an  Episcopalian  [stony  silence],  but  my  great  grand¬ 
mother  belonged  to  the  Presbyterian  Church  of  Scotland 
[continued  silence].  My  grandfather  was  a  Baptist  [more 
silence],  but  my  grandmother  was  a  Congregationalist  [still 
frigid  silence].  But  I  had  a  great  aunt  who  was  a 
Wesleyan  Methodist  [loud  applause]  and — and  I  have 


C.  Silvester  Horne 


53 

always  followed  my  great  aunt  [loud  and  prolonged  cheer¬ 
ing].”  He  got  in. 

When  the  election  came  in  1906  a  motor-car  campaign 
on  behalf  of  the  Free  Church  candidates  was  all  ready, 
and  a  wealth  of  literature  on  the  education  question  had 
been  prepared.  The  result  of  the  election  was  a  -great 
Liberal  triumph  at  the  polls,  the  return  to  the  House  of 
Commons  of  the  largest  body  of  Free  Church  M.P.s  in 
English  history,  and  at  long  last  an  absolute  failure  by 
the  Liberal  Government  to  effect  any  sort  of  improvement 
for  Free  Churchmen  in  the  realm  of  State-provided  educa¬ 
tion.  We  know  now  that  even  Mr.  BirrelFs  Bill  was  so 
mauled  by  the  Cabinet  before  its  presentation  to  the  House 
that  Mr.  Birrell  himself  scarcely  recognized  his  offspring. 
Horne’s  disappointment  was  intense;  and  he  was  almost 
as  chagrined  over  the  subsequent  failures  of  Mr.  McKenna 
and  Mr.  Runciman  to  do  anything  real  to  redeem  the 
election  promises  on  education. 

Mr.  Silvester  Horne’s  decision  three  years  later  to  stand 
for  Parliament  did  not  surprise  me.  The  House  of  Com¬ 
mons  appealed  to  him;  but  Whitefields  enthralled  him. 
Dr.  J.  H.  Jowett  persuaded  Silvester  Horne  that  he 
might  stand  as  a  Liberal  candidate,  and  even  sit 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  without  relinquishing  his 
superintendency  of  Whitefields.  I  wrote  to  Horne  ex¬ 
pressing  my  fearfulness  lest  Parliament  might  wean  him 
away  from  Whitefields.  He  replied  by  return — which  was 
not  by  any  means  his  invariable  custom  : 

My  dear  Porritt, — I  was  on  the  point  of  writing  to  you 
when  your  letter  arrived.  Let  me  thank  you  again  and  again 
for  your  most  generous  words  in  the  Sunday  at  Home.  They 
say  it  will  win  Ipswich.  Anyway,  It  did  profoundly  touch  both 
my  wife  and  myself,  and  I  know  it  will  greatly  help  our  work 
all  over  the  country.  No,  nothing  will  induce  me  to  give  up 
Whitefields.  I  do  not  believe  it  is  impossible  to  combine  the 


54 


The  Best  I  Remember 


two  and  to  keep  the  religious  interest  foremost  in  both  places. 
I  do  not  believe  the  House  of  Commons  need  unmake  one 
spiritually  nor  Whitefields  unfit  one  for  things  secular.  If  these 
things,  which  all  my  life  I  have  believed,  prove  to  have  no 
foundation,  the  bottom  is  out  of  my  creed. 

With  renewed  thanks  and  best  wishes  for  1910, 

Ever  yours  affectionately, 

C,  Silvester  Horne. 

Deep  down  in  his  heart  Silvester  Horne  believed  that 
there  was  no  separation  of  the  secular  and  the  sacred.  The 
two  had  so  to  mingle  that  the  sacred  permeated  the  secular 
in  life.  He  lived  by  that  faith,  and  it  explained  the  way 
he  thrust  his  religion  into  his  politics  and  his  politics  into 
his  religion.  They  were,  to  him,  one  and  indivisible. 
Yet  he  never  talked  politics  in  the  pulpit,  though  it  was 
often  said  that  he  did.  At  Whitefields  he  comforted  the 
saints  (never  very  numerous,  judging  by  the  size  of  the 
congregation)  in  the  morning,  treated  all  questions  under 
the  sun — politics  included — from  the  New  Testament 
standpoint  at  the  Men’s  Meeting  in  the  afternoon,  and 
always  preached  an  evangelistic  sermon  which  would  have 
gladdened  the  heart  of  Dwight  L.  Moody  in  the  evening. 
But,  truly,  to  Silvester  Horne  politics  and  religion  were 
two  interwoven  instruments  for  promoting  the  Kingdom 
of  God  on  earth. 

Silvester  Horne  might  perhaps  have  made  a  success 
of  his  combination  of  a  ministerial  and  a  parliamentary 
life — ^^he  really  had  more  leisure  as  an  M.P.,  since  his 
duties  at  Westminster  tied  him  to  London  and  prevented 
his  endless  itinerations  in  the  country — but  he  found  his 
officials  at  Whitefields  antagonistic  to  his  dual  career. 
One  or  two  London  newspapers  assailed  him  for  the 
political  complexion  of  his  Sunday  afternoon’s  men’s 
meeting.  Florne  did  not  care  two  straws  for  their  criti¬ 
cisms,  but  some  members  of  the  Whitefields  Council  cared 


C.  Silvester  Horne 


55 


a  good  deal.  In  all  ,his  ministry  Horne  had  never  before 
had  anything  but  steadfast  support  inside  his  church,  and 
the  antagonism  of  his  officials  distressed  him.  Eventually 
he  gave  a  pledge  that  there  would  be  no  more  politics  at 
Whitefields.  A  member  of  the  Council,  in  his  presence,  at 
once  said  that  he  would  give  as  a  thankoffering  to 

the  mission  funds.  Horne  was  gravely  disturbed,  not  to 
say  wounded  in  spirit.  A  few  months  later  he  resigned 
his  superintendency,  and  turned  away  from  Whitefields 
a  sorrowful  man. 

What  was  the  secret  of  Silvester  Horne’s  captivating 
charm  ?  How  came  he  to  exercise  so  much  power  over 
men?  For  it  was  with  men  that  he  was  most  influential. 
Women  were  not  drawn  to  him,  and  he  cared  little  for 
their  society.  I  think  his  power  over  men  was  in  the 
magnetism  of  his  radiant  character  and  his  infectious  joy 
in  living.  He  was  in  the  very  best  sense  of  the  term  a 
man’s  man,  with  a  healthy  body,  a  healthy  mind  and  a 
healthy  soul.  He  shrank  from  nothing  that  was  not  un¬ 
clean.  To  him  life  was  a  gorgeous  adventure — a 
vagabondage  in  quest  of  the  infinite.  When  he  was  at 
Kensington  he  confessed  (in  his  diary)  that  he  would 
“give  a  good  slice  of  the  dignity  of  Allen  Street  for  some 
almost  devil-may-care  enthusiasm  and  hot-headed  fanatical 
madness  of  Paul’s  sort.”  He  loved  adventurers  and 
hated  merely  sticky  negative  goodness.  Conventions,  he 
thought,  were  things  to  be  stamped  upon,  and  ruts  the 
path  to  the  end  of  all  things.  How  many  times  did  he 
say  that  between  a  groove  and  a  grave  there  was  only  a 
distinction  in  depth !  He  was  a  Christian  bon  vivant 
overflowing  with  joy  of  life. 

I  detected  in  Silvester  Horne’s  last  years  a  tinge  of 
disappointment  over  both  men  and  affairs.  The  House  of 
Commons  is  the  most  disillusionizing  institution  in  the 
King’s  realm,  and  it  was  not  without  its  influence  on  Horne. 
Then  he  was  distressed  at  the  sagging  moral  energy  of 

E 


56  The  Best  I  Remember 

the  Free  Churches.  He  told  me  just  before  he  went  off 
to  America  that  he  did  not  think  he  would  either  return 
to  the  Congregational  ministry  or  try  to  retain  his  seat  in 
the  House  of  Commons.  It  seemed  to  him,  he  indicated, 
that  as  a  dynamic  of  righteousness  the  Brotherhood  move¬ 
ment  presented  the  best  field  open  to  him  for  his  last  years, 
and  he  thought  he  might  throw  himself  into  its  inter¬ 
national  work.  His  perplexity  was  tragically  solved  by 
the  sudden  death  that  overtook  him  when  walking  hand 
in  hand  with  his  wife  on  the  deck  of  the  steamer  that  was 
conveying  him  from  Niagara  to  Toronto.  In  that  he 
escaped  the  long-drawn  agony  of  the  European  war  one 
may  say  “felix  opportunitate  mortis.” 


CHAPTER  IX 


W.  T.  STEAD  AND  HUGH  PRICE  HUGHES 

Young  journalists  lost  a  very  good  friend  when  W.  T. 

Stead  went  down  in  the  Titanic.  I  owe  him  incalculable 
debts  for  immeasurable  personal  kindnesses  to  me.  Stead 
was  a  great  encourager  to  youngsters,  and  I  never  sought 
his  counsel  without  getting  it,  freely  given.  He  had  just 
come  out  of  prison  (where  he  went  “all  on  account  of 
Eliza,”  as  he  used  to  say)  when  I  came  to  London,  and 
he  often  said  that  without  a  term  in  prison  a  journalist’s 
education  was  incomplete.  In  conversation  he  would  say, 
“When  I  was  in  prison  I  .  .  as  if  he  gloried  in  his 
incarceration.  Really  he  did  glory  in  it.  Every  year  he 
gathered  a  few  intimate  friends  to  dinner  on  the  anni¬ 
versary  of  his  sentence,  and  for  the  occasion  wore  a  prison 
suit,  with  the  broad  arrows  splashed  all  over  it.  Stead’s 
genius  was  often  overshadowed  by  his  erraticisms.  He 
was  capable  of  almost  superhuman  feats  of  writing.  One 
night,  deceived  by  an  old  time-table,  he  missed  a  train 
by  which  he  intended  starting  for  Russia.  Deciding  to 
go  by  the  morning  train  next  day,  he  determined  to  stay 
the  night  at  his  office  at  Mowbray  House.  He  asked  his 
business  manager,  Mr.  Edwin  Stout,  if  he  wanted  anything 
for  the  “Books  for  the  Bairns”  series.  When  told  that 
“copy  ”  was  needed.  Stead  sat  down,  and,  writing  through 
the  night,  produced  his  “New  Testament  for  Children,” 
including  a  Life  of  Jesus  and  the  story  of  the  early  Church. 
The  “copy  ”  awaited  Mr.  Stout  on  his  desk  next  morning. 

Stead’s  knowledge  of  the  Bible  would  have  put  some 
bishops  to  shame.  He  could  finish  from  memory  almost 

57 


The  Best  I  Remember 


58 

any  verse  from  Scripture,  the  first  half  of  which  was  given 
to  him,  and  the  bewildering  names  of  obscure  Scriptural 
characters  had  literally  no  terrors  for  him.  His  conversa¬ 
tion  was  fascinating.  He  knew  everybody,  and  was 
interested  in  everything,  and  he  threw  an  explosive  energy 
into  the  talk  that  was  both  captivating  and  overwhelming. 
His  idea  of  a  conversation  was  to  have  another  man  to 
listen  to  him.  When  he  “interviewed”  Silvester  Horne  at 
the  time  Whitefields  was  being  established  as  an  audacious 
central  mission,  Stead  and  Horne  spent  two  hours  together 
at  the  National  Liberal  Club.  Stead  did  all  the  talking. 
He  was  full  of  ideas  for  Horne  to  put  into  operation  in  his 
Tottenham  Court  Road  Tabernacle,  and  he  did  not  give 
Horne  a  chance  tO'  explain  his  own  plans.  But  the  article 
which  Stead  wrote  on  Whitefields  was  excellent  reading. 

I  remember  going  to  see  Stead  just  before  the  Torrey- 
Alexander  Mission  opened  at  the  Albert  Hall.  He  had 
received  enthusiastic  reports  about  the  American  Evan¬ 
gelists  from  Australian  correspondents,  and  he  had  gone 
up  to  Liverpool  to  meet  Dr.  Torrey  and  Mr.  Alexander 
before  they  came  to  London.  He  was  confident  that  they 
would  “move”  London  as  he  believed  that  they  had 
“moved”  Melbourne.  He  wrote  an  ecstatic  article  about 
the  two  men  for  the  Christian  World,  and  he  threw  himself 
into  the  Albert  Hall  campaign  with  all  the  exuberant 
zest  which  he  commanded.  The  next  time  I  saw  him  he 
was  cursing  Dr.  Torrey  with  the  utmost  vehemence. 
Torrey  had  assailed  the  moral  character  of  Tom  Paine,  and 
even  when  it  had  been  proved  tO'  demonstration  that  he  had 
done  injustice  to  a  dead  man,  he  would  not  withdraw  what 
/  he  had  said.  Stead  lost  all  patience  with  him  and  dropped 
Torrey- Alexander  as  if  they  were  hot  cinders.  W.  T.  him¬ 
self  did  not  relish  being  convicted  of  an  error.  Some  of 
his  swans  proved  to  be  geese ;  but  he  hated  having  to  con¬ 
fess  that  he  had  been  duped.  I  had  a  very  slight  part  in 
proving  that  he  had  been  grossly  deceived  by  a  young  lady 


W.  T.  Stead  and  Hugh  Price  Hughes  59 

about  whose  romantic  life  story  he  had  prepared  an 
“extra”  for  the  Review  of  Reviews.  He  believed  in  her 
bona  fides  and  avowed  his  determination  to  go  on  with  the 
publication.  Only  by  careful  investigations  was  an  accu¬ 
mulation  of  evidence  gathered  exploding  the  fiction  to 
which  Stead  was  pledging  his  reputation.  Even  when, 
against  his  will,  he  had  to  acknowledge  that  he  had  been 
utterly  deceived,  he  was  much  more  exasperated  against 
those  responsible  for  the  exposure  than  against  the  young 
lady  who  had  victimized  him.  Stead’s  faith  in  womanhood 
was  unconquerable. 

In  matters  of  business  Stead  was  a  child.  He  could 
never  manage  even  his  personal  finances,  and  he  never 
attempted  to  manage  the  finances  of  the  Review  of 
R  eviews.  When  his  partnership  with  Sir  George  Newnes 
in  the  Review  of  Reviews  was  dissolved.  Stead  found  him¬ 
self  in  an  awkward  financial  plight.  He  called  to  his  aid 
his  friend  Mr.  Edwin  Stout,  then  Hugh  Price  Hughes’s 
managing  editor  of  the  Methodist  Times,  and  Mr.  Stout 
had  to  pluck  Stead’s  chestnuts  out  of  the  fire.  It  was  an 
almost  superhuman  task,  but  it  was  carried  through. 

Stead  never  allowed  the  counting-house  to  influence  his 
editorial  policy  on  anything.  In  this  he  cut  across  a  grow¬ 
ing  habit  in  journalism.  If  a  course  of  procedure  struck 
Stead  as  right,  he  went  ahead  whatever  might  be  the  con¬ 
sequences  to  either  the  circulation  or  the  advertising  revenue 
of  the  Review.  His  violent  stand  against  the  Boer  War, 
for  example,  almost  bankrupted  the  Review  of  Reviews; 
but  Stead  never  turned  a  hair.  The  anxieties  always  fell 
upon  Mr.  Stout,  whose  managerial  genius  carried  Stead 
through  crisis  after  crisis.  Stead  never  had  a  cheque-book 
of  his  own.  He  left  it  all  tO'  Mr.  Stout.  Even  the  weekly 
domestic  cheque  for  the  Stead  household  was  signed  by 
the  manager  of  the  Review  of  Reviews.  When  Stead  died 
all  his  friends  assumed  that  by  his  will  he  would  make  Mr. 
Stout  the  controlling  spirit  of  the  Review,  but  he  had 


6o 


The  Best  I  Remember 


made  no  such  provision.  The  family  parted  with  Mr. 
Stout  light-heartedly  —  with  consequences  that  came 
speedily. 

I  saw  W.  T.  Stead  a  few  days  before  he  sailed  on  his 
last  ill-fated  voyage.  He  was  full  of  the  Titanic,  the  un- 
sinkable  ship,  and  seemed  quite  convinced  that  man  the 
shipbuilder  could  snap  his  fingers  at  the  terrors  of  the 
raging  sea.  I  have  often  wondered  what  Stead  was  doing 
when  the  Titanic  went  down.  Almost  certainly,  I  feel, 
he  was  conducting  a  prayer  meeting  among  the  steerage. 
He  had  an  unshakable  belief  in  direct  answer  to  prayer — a 
childlike  faith.  His  favourite  hymn  was  Newton’s 
“Begone  unbelief,  my  Saviour  is  near,”  which  contains 
four  lines  peculiarly  apposite  to  the  circumstances  of  his 
death  : 

His  love  in  times  past 
Foirbids  me  to  think 
He’ll  leave  me  at  last 
In  trouble  to  sink. 

The  governing  principle  of  Stead’s  whole  life  was  his 
sensitiveness  to  wrong.  No  Puritan  “Father”  was  more 
“conscious  of  sin,”  and  he  had  a  Gladstonian  sensitiveness 
about  wronged  men  and  peoples. 

Hugh  Price  Hughes  was  at  his  zenith  when  I  began  my 
journalistic  career  in  London.  Stead  once  called  Hughes 
“a  Day  of  Judgment  in  breeches,”  and  the  description  was 
apt,  if  rather  cruel.  One  of  my  early  engagements  was  to 
report  that  tremendous  onslaught  made  by  Hugh  Price 
Hughes  upon  Charles  Stewart  Parnell  after  the  Divorce 
Court  verdict  on  the  O’Shea  case.  When  really  moved 
Hughes  spoke  with  terrific  vehemence.  The  violence  with 
which  he  struck  the  hand-rail  to  emphasize  his  points  often 
caused  the  Press  table  to  vibrate.  Sir  J.  M.  Barrie  tells  of 
an  Auld  Licht  preacher  who  hammered  the  Bible  so  hard 


W.  T.  Stead  and  Hugh  Price  Hughes  6i 

when  preaching  that  the  kirk  had  to  have  a  standing  con¬ 
tract  with  the  carpenter  to  repair  the  pulpit  once  a  month. 
Hughes’s  vehemence  in  gesture  makes  Barrie’s  story 
credible.  One  might  almost  say  that  Hugh  Price  Hughes 
made  actual  history  by  that  Parnell  outburst  and  by  his 
trenchant  leading  article  in  the  Methodist  Times  on  the  fol¬ 
lowing  Thursday.  “Of  course  Parnell  must  go,”  was  the  un¬ 
equivocal  opening  sentence  of  the  famous  Hughes  leader. 
He  drove  Parnell  out  of  British  politics,  and  delayed  Irish 
Home  Rule  for  thirty  years.  Mr.  Gladstone  accepted 
Hughes’s  declaration  “that  what  is  morally  wrong  can 
never  be  politically  right,”  as  the  authentic  voice  of  the 
Nonconformist  conscience  on  the  Parnell  scandal.  And, 
bowing  before  the  storm,  he  let  it  be  known  that  Parnell 
would  have  to  go. 

The  phrase  “the  Nonconformist  Conscience  ”  came  into 
use  through  Hughes’s  oration.  It  was  first  used  by  the 
Times  in  its  leading  article  on  Hugh  Price  Hughes’s  pro¬ 
test  against  Parnell’s  continuance  after  the  Divorce  Court 
expose.  We  scarcely  ever  hear  the  phrase  now.  Dr. 
Orchard  says  that  it  went  into  cold  storage  when  the  war 
broke  out  in  1914,  and  has  been  given  only  an  occasional 
airing  since.  Mr.  Sidney  Berry  has  said  that  the  Noncon¬ 
formist  Conscience  is  now  at  Lambeth  Palace. 

If  Hugh  Price  Hughes  did  not  originate  the 
Nonconformist  Conscience,  he  for  years  was  its  most 
conspicuous  mouthpiece.  The  St.  James’s  Hall  Con¬ 
ference  was,  par  excellence,  the  platform  .for  the  discussion 
of  moral  issues,  and  Hugh  Price  Hughes  had  the  knack 
of  catching  the  ear  of  the  press.  He  knew  the  exact  value 
of  publicity  then,  as  Mr.  Lloyd  George  knows  it  to-day. 
He  laid  it  down  as  a  rule  of  guidance  for  the  stewards  at 
his  St.  James’s  Hall  Conferences  that  pressmen  must  be 
shown  every  courtesy.  “If  a  duke  and  a  reporter  come 
here  together,”  he  said,  “and  there  is  only  one  seat 
left,  it  must  be  given  to  the  reporter.”  As  a  whirling 


62  ■ 


The  Best  I  Remember 


rhetorician  Hugh  Price  Hughes  was  unrivalled  in  his  day. 
He  had  a  shrill,  penetrating  voice.  He  spoke,  when 
roused,  at  a  tremendous  pace,  and  his  adjectival  vehemence 
was  like  a  cannonade.  Hughes  had  a  strong  strain  of 
Jewish  blood  in  his  ancestry,  and  this,  mingled  with  the 
Welsh  stock  from  which  he  sprang,  made  him  a  complex 
personality.  He  never  attracted  me  to  him  by  any  grace 
or  charm  of  manner.  I  served  for  a  time  on  an  education 
committee  upon  which  he  was  a  leading  figure,  and  the 
impression  he  made  upon  my  mind  was  of  an  arbitrary 
man  who  would  have  his  way  even  if  he  had  to  browbeat 
everybody  who  differed  from  him.  He  was  an  intellectual 
militarist.  By  instinct  he  was  narrow,  but  he  honestly 
tried,  I  think,  to  take  broader  views  than  were  his  own  by 
temperament.  He  used  to  say  that  a  man  may  be  as 
orthodox  as  the  devil  and  twice  as  wicked,  but  in  his  heart 
of  hearts  he  simply  loathed  a  Unitarian  like  the  very  devil. 

I  often  thought  he  preferred  an  atheist.  More  than  any¬ 
body  else,  Hugh  Price  Hughes  established  the  policy  that 
banned  Unitarians  from  any  association  with  the  Free 
Church  Council,  though  as  that  Council  came  into  being 
to  do  evangelistic  work,  Unitarians  make  too  much*  of  a 
grievance  of  their  exclusion  from  co-operative  work  in 
which  they  would  not  be  happy.  Sometimes  Hugh  Price|| 
Hughes  compelled  one  to  believe  that  he  had  no  hope  foVi 
the  salvation  of  anyone  but  Wesleyan  Methodists,  and 
not  very  much  hope  for  them.  After  a  visit,  during  a 
spell  of  ill-health,  to  the  Surrey  Hills,  he  came  back  to 
London  and  publicly  declared  that  that  quarter  of  England 
was  spiritually  destitute.  What  he  meant  was  that 
Wesleyan  Methodism  was  not  triumphantly  prosperous 
there. 

Hugh  Price  Hughes’s  work  in  the  West  London 
Mission  was  a  piece  of  pioneering  in  religious  enterprise 
that  set  a  radiant  example  to  other  denominations.  Though 
he  founded  the  Methodist  Times  as  an  organ  of  progres- 


W.  T.  Stead  and  Hugh  Price  Hughes  63 

sive  Methodism,  and  made  it  detested  by  reactionary 
Methodists  (they  dubbed  it  the  “Boys’  Own  Paper”). 
Hughes  was  not  really  a  great  journalist.  He  had  “flair,” 
and  his  sharp  staccato  style  was  arresting.  His  literary 
vice  was  screaming.  He  went  out,  as  Americans  say, 
“armed  with  buckshot  to'  kill  humming  birds”;  and  his 
weak  sense  of  perspective  made  him  rage  in  the  same 
hyperbolical  frenzy  over  a  trifling  point  of  order  in  a 
Methodist  synod  as  over  a  gross  moral  abuse  in  high 
politics.  It  was  always  the  Nasmyth  hammer  cracking 
Barcelona  nuts.  With  Hugh  Price  Hughes  there  were 
no  gradations^ — he  was  deficient  in  all  sense  of  chiaroscuro. 

Death  came  tO'  Hugh  Price  Hughes  as  a  happy  release, 
though  he  was  still  a  comparatively  young  man.  He  had 
squandered  his  physical  and  nervous  resources  with  both 
hands  as  a  preacher,  missioner  and  writer.  His  heart 
was  affected  by  overwork,  but  what  distressed  him  in  his 
last  days — and  no  doubt  accelerated  his  death — was  a 
miserable  squabble  that  arose  over  a  little  impromptu  dance 

in  which  some  of  the  Sisters  of  the  West  London  Mission 

« 

had  indulged  in  one  of  the  mission  halls.  The  affair  was 
as  innocent  as  it  could  be.  Hughes  would  not  have  sanc¬ 
tioned  it,  perhaps,  but  in  the  circumstances  he  would  not 
have  been  unduly  disturbed  by  the  little — shall  I  call  it  ? 
— indiscretion.  But  news  of  the  dancing  having  taken 
place  reached  the  ears  of  a  prominent  London  Methodist 
layman,  who'  raised  an  ugly  furore  over  the  affair.  Hugh 
Price  Hughes,  in  delicate  health,  and  with  his  morbid 
sensitiveness  to  any  criticism  of  the  West  London  Mission, 
worried  terribly  over  this  storm  in  a  teacup.  It  preyed 
upon  him — all  the  more  because  he  was  off  the  scene  trying 
to  resuscitate  his  health  in  the  country.  He  died  in  a  cab 
as  he  drove  away  from  a  meeting  at  Sion  College. 

On  the  morning  after  his  death  I  got  up  at  six  o’clock 
to  play  a  before-breakfast  round  of  golf  with  my  friend 
and  neighbour,  Mr.  Arthur  P.  Grubb,  then  assistant 


The  Best  I  Remember 


64 

editor  of  the  Methodist  Times,  and  a  colleague  in  close 
association  with  Hugh  Price  Hughes.  Just  as  we  were 
leaving  my  house  with  our  golf  sticks  slung  over  our 
shoulders  the  newsboy  left  the  Daily  Neivs  at  the  door. 

“Wait  a  second,”  I  said.  “Just  let  us  see  if  anything 
has  happened.” 

I  opened  the  paper,  and  the  first  thing  that  met  my 
eye  was,  “Death  of  Hugh  Price  Hughes.”  We  walked 
in  silence  to  the  first  tee  and  played,  if  I  remember  rightly, 
one  hole.  Then  we  walked  home  again.  Without  ex¬ 
changing  a  word  about  it,  we  both  felt  that  golf  was 
impossible  that  morning. 

Another  great  Wesleyan  Methodist — to  whom  Hugh 
Price  Hughes  owed  many  a  debt  for  suggestions — was  the 
late  Samuel  T.  Collier,  who,  by  inaugurating  the  Man¬ 
chester  Central  Mission,  taught  Methodists  how  to  run 
their  down-town  missions.  “Sam  ”  Collier  was  a  man 
for  whom  I  had  a  profound  regard.  He  was  a  very  big 
soul.  Intellectually  he  was  commonplace,  but  he  had  a 
genius  for  organization,  and,  above  all — and  this  lay 
beneath  the  success  of  his  Manchester  Mission — a  profound 
faith  that  no  human  being  could  fall  so  low  that  he  could 
not  be  restored  by  the  love  of  Christ  ministered  through 
other  human  beings.  This  made  him  see  redemption 
feasible  in  the  meanest  human  derelicts.  He  gave  every 
man  or  woman  who  sought  his  aid  another  chance. 
Collier  had  no  patience  with 

'  Organized  charity  measured  and  iced 
In  the  name  of  a  cautious,  statistical  Christ. 

I  spent  three  days  investigating  the  methods  of  work 
in  the  Manchester  Mission.  To  see  Collier  in  his  office 
interviewing  “down  and  outers”  was  a  study  in  the  art 
of  discerning  character.  He  admitted  that  much  of  the 


W.  T.  Stead  and  Hugh  Price  Hughes  65 

work  of  the  Central  Mission  was  work  that  the  Manchester 
municipality  should  have  done  out  of  the  rates,  but  his 
argument  was  that  if  done  in  an  official  way  by  the  city 
council  the  work  would  be  deficient  in  the  uplifting  touch 
which  religious  passion  gave  to  it.  Collier  did  a  giant’s 
work  for  nearly  forty  years,  and  died  in  harness.  His 
death  had  a  glorious  side  to  it.  He  was,  he  thought, 
recovering,  when  his  heart  gave  out,  and  he  knew  the  end 
had  come.  Quietly  raising  himself  in  bed,  he  asked  his 
wife  and  two  sons  to  join  him  in  singing  the  Doxology, 
and  with  “Praise  God  from  whom  all  blessings  flow” 
on  his  lips  he  greeted  the  unseen. 


CHAPTER  X 


DR„  PARKER 

IF  genius  is  an  intuitive  gift  and  not,  as  Carlyle  said,  “a 
capacity  for  taking  infinite  pains,”  Dr.  Parker  was 
assuredly  a  genius.  Outside  this  hypothesis  of  genius 
there  was  no  explaining  his  extraordinary  personality.  He 
had  no  early  advantages.  Heredity  and  environment  com¬ 
bined  in  fighting  against  him  in  childhood,  and  he  was 
denied  the  advantage  of  a  systematic  education.  But  (as 
Dr.  Reaveley  Glover  has  said)  “genius  has  a  gift  of  doing 
without.”  One  may  even  doubt  if  Dr.  Parker  ever  read 
widely.  Like  Abraham  Lincoln,  who  said  he  had  read 
less  and  thought  more  than  most  men  of  his  time,  Joseph 
Parker  was  an  original  in  mind  and  habit.  He  repelled 
and  fascinated  at  one  and  the  same  time.  At  once  he  was 
egotistical  and  simple  as  a  child.  Dr.  Forsyth,  whose  wit 
was  sometimes  cruel,  once  said  that  “At  one  time  I  thought 
Dr.  Parker  was  a  good  man  touched  with  egotism ;  I  have 
come  to  believe  that  he  is  an  egotist  touched  with  good¬ 
ness.”  The  judgment  was  harsh;  but  Dr.  Parker  always 
drew  the  lightning.  Men  either  believed  in  him  implicitly 
or  voted  him  a  poseur  and  a  charlatan.  He  was  a  Protean 
character  with  Jekyll  and  Hyde  always  at  war  within  him. 
I  can  imagine  that  he  never  saw  a  man-brute  without 
saying,  “There,  but  for  the  grace  of  God,  goes  Joseph 
Parker.” 

Newspaper  reporters  often  did  Dr.  Parker  a  dis-service 
by  reporting  his  obiter  dicta  without  giving  their  context. 
His  famous  objurgation  of  the  Sultan  was  an  instance. 
A  Congregational  minister  travelling  in  East  Anglia  got 

66 


Dr.  Parker 


67 

into  conversation  with  a  clergyman  in  the  train.  When 
he  mentioned  that  he  was  a  Congregationalist  the  clergy¬ 
man  said,  “Let  me  see,  Dr.  Parker  is  a  Congregationalist, 
isn’t  he?”  The  minister  assented.  “And  he’s  the  man 
who  said  "God  damn  the  Sultan,’  isn’t  he?”  If  the 
minister  had  had  the  context  of  the  famous  utterance  even 
the  clergyman  might  have  excused  Dr.  Parker’s  outburst. 
This  was  the  offending  passage  : 

“When  I  heard  that  the  Kaiser  went  to  the  East  and  in 
an  after-dinner  speech  said,  ‘My  friend  the  Sultan,’  I  was 
astonished.  I  could  have  sat  down  in  humiliation  and  terror. 
The  Great  Assassin  had  insulted  civilization  and  outraged 
every  Christian  sentiment,  and  defied  concerted  Europe.  He 
may  have  been  the  Kaiser’s  friend;  he  was  not  yours,  he  was 
not  mine,  he  was  not  God’s.  Down  with  such  speaking  !  So 
long  as  any  man  can  say  ‘  My  friend  the  Sultan  ’  I  wish  tO'  have 
no  commerce  01  friendship  with  that  man.  The  Sultan 
drenched  the  lands  with  blood,  cut  up  men,  women  and  children, 
spared  none,  ripped  up  the  womb,  bayoneted  the  old,  and  did 
all  manner  of  hellish  iniquity.  He  may  have  been  the  Kaiser’s 
friend,  but  in  the  name  of  God,  in  the  name  of  the  Father  and 
the  Son  and  the  Holy  Ghost — speaking  of  the  Sultan  not  merelr 
as  a  man,  but  speaking  of  him  as  the  Great  Assassin — I  say 
‘  God  damn  the  Sultan  !  ’  ” 

Spoken  sixteen  years  later  these  words  would  not,  perhaps, 
have  jarred  on  the  war  minds  of  England.  The  British 
Government’s  propaganda  department  would  have  made 
good  use  of  them. 

Dr.  Parker  was  just  completing  his  “People’s  Bible” 
when  I  came  first  in  contact  with  him.  It  was  a  stupendous 
feat — an  exposition  of  the  whole  Bible.  Dr.  Parker  was 
not  an  exegetist  in  the  scholarly  sense.  Dr.  Vaughan 
Pryce,  Principal  of  New  College,  was  believed  to  do  Dr. 
Parker’s  “ Delitzsching  ”  for  him;  but  Dr.  Parker  did 
his  own  “Matthew  Henry-ing.”  His  knowledge  of  the 


68 


The  Best  I  Remember 


English  Bible  was  rare  in  its  comprehensiveness.  He 
used  to  be  credited  with  sitting  for  hours  in  his  study 
tapping  an  open  Bible  with  his  finger-tips  and  murmuring  : 
“This  is  history — exhausts  all  history!  This  is  poetry — 
exhausts  all  poetry  !  This  is  truth — ^exhausts  all  truth.” 
He  made  the  English  Bible  luminous,  not  so  much  by 
detailed  exposition  as  by  lightning  flashes  of  intuitive  in¬ 
sight  that  pierced  to  the  very  heart  of  a  text.  An  old 
lady  who  attended  Dr.  Parker’s  ministry  once  went  into 
his  vestry  to  thank  him  for  the  inspiration  he  gave  her. 
“You  do  throw  such  wonderful  light  on  the  Bible,  doctor,” 
she  said.  “Do  you  know  that  until  this  morning  I  had 
always  thought  that  Sodom  and  Gomorrah  were  man  and 
wife  ?  ” 

At  the  request  of  the  late  John  Lobb  Dr.  Parker  once 
edited  the  Evening  Sun  for  a  week;  but  the  “stunt” — 
we  did  not  call  them  stunts  in  those  days — was  not  a 
startling  success.  In  fact  he  did  not  keep  it  up  for  the 
week.  This  was  not  Dr.  Parker’s  first  essay  in  editorship. 
At  one  time  he  owned  and  edited  a  paper  called  the 
Fountain,  but  the  venture  failed.  I  remember  Dr.  Parker 
telling  me  about  his  experiences  as  editor.  “  I  had  a  sub¬ 
editor,”  he  said,  “and  he  used  to  bring  me  proof  sheets 
of  the  paper.  There  would  be  little  spaces  at  the  foot  of 
the  columns  to  be  filled  up,  and  at  first  I  left  him  to  write 
the  paragraphs  to  fill  up  the  spaces.  My  sub-editor  did 
not  like  the  Congregational  Union  officials,  and  when 
the  paper  came  out  the  paragraphs  would  all  be  little  digs 
at  the  secretaries.  I  said  to  him,  ^  Young  man,  if  you 
have  a  grievance  against  the  Congregational  Union  get 
a  barrel  of  gunpowder  and  blow  up  the  Memorial  Hall. 
Don’t  fling  cherry  stones  at  the  windows.’  ”  And  with  a 
flick  of  his  thumb — like  a  schoolboy  shooting  a  marble — 
he  suited  the  action  to  the  word. 

In  controversy  Dr.  Parker  did  not  shine.  He  always 
left  terribly  vulnerable  gaps  in  his  own  armour.  Half  way 


Dr.  Parker 


69 

through  a  prolonged-  controversy  it  seemed  as  if  he  got 
bored  with  the  whole  thing  and  gave  away  all  he  had  won. 
But  once  in  a  sharp  exchange  of  letters  he  scored  off  Mr. 
Spurgeon.  “Let  me  advise  you,”  wrote  Parker,  “to  widen 
the  circle  of  which  you  are  the  centre.  You  are  surrounded 
by  offerers  of  incense.  They  flatter  your  weaknesses;  they 
laugh  at  your  jokes;  they  feed  you  with  compliments. 
My  dear  Spurgeon,  you  are  too  big  a  man  for  this.  Take 
in  more  fresh  air.  Open  your  windows,  even  when  the 
wind  is  in  the  east.  Scatter  vour  ecclesiastical  harem.  I 
do  not  say  destroy  your  circle.  I  simply  say  enlarge  it. 
As  with  your  circle  so  with  your  reading.” 

Mrs.  Morgan  Richards,  mother  of  “John  Oliver 
Hobbes  ”  (Mrs.  Craigie),  was  a  devoted  admirer  of  Dr. 
Parker,  and  Dr.  Parker,  who  somehow  drew  children  to 
him,  was  very  fond  of  the  little  girl.  When  grown  up 
Mrs.  Craigie  became  a  Roman  Catholic.  She  wrote  her¬ 
self  to  Dr.  Parker,  saying  that  she  had  adopted  the  “saint’s 
name”  and  in  future  would  sign  herself  “Pearl  Maria 
Teresa  Craigie.”  Dr.  Parker  replied  in  a  kindly  note — 
signing  himself  “Joseph  Matthew  Mark  Luke  John 
Parker.” 

Stories  quite  ben  trovato  circulated  by  the  score  about 
Dr.  Parker,  and  many  of  them  libelled  his  really  extra¬ 
ordinary  wit.  When  you  listened  to  him  preaching  the 
occasional  flashes  of  humour  lighted  up  the  sermon;  but 
it  would  be  a  very  unjust  estimate  of  Dr.  Parker  to  suggest 
that  he  owed  his  world  reputation  either  to  his  wit  or  his 
eccentricities.  His  personality  was  a  mighty  thing.  It 
might  repel  you  or  it  might  fascinate  you,  but  I  do  not 
think  anyone  ever  heard  Dr.  Parker  and  went  away  think¬ 
ing  no  more  of  what  the  preacher  had  said. 

Occasionally  Dr.  Parker,  when  talking  with  an  intimate, 
would  fall  into  religiosity.  One  day  a  friend  asked  him 
how  his  last  book  was  selling.  In  his  pompous  way  Dr. 
Parker,  who  evidently  wanted  to  convey  the  impression 


70 


The  Best  I  Remember 


that  a  book  like  his  called  for  judgment  by  a  far  higher 
tribunal  than  its  sales,  replied  :  “The  final  test  of  a  book, 

my  friend,  is - ”  “The  royalty  account!”  interjected 

the  friend  impiously.  “Exactly!  Exactly!”  was  Dr. 
Parker’s  rejoinder.  He  saw  fiction  would  not  go  down. 

I  once  heard  Dr.  Parker,  speaking,  he  said,  on  behalf 
of  his  deacons,  complain  of  the  collections  at  the  City 
Temple  midday  services  on  Thursdays.  He  hated  to  speak 
of  money,  he  said,  and  he  did  not  believe  that  habitues  of 
the  City  Temple  meant  to  evade  their  duty.  “  It  is  all  the 
fault  of  the  fog,”  he  said  in  his  most  insinuating  tones. 
“It  gets  into  the  church  and  blurs  your  eyes,  so  that  when 
the  deacon  comes  with  the  collection-box  you  mistake  it 
for  a  hymn-book  and  say,  *  No,  thank  you.  Pve  got 
one.’  ” 

The  most  characteristic  thing  I  ever  heard  him  say  was 
a  prefatory  note  to  one  of  his  Thursday  morning  sermons. 
He  said  he  approached  the  duty  of  preaching  that  morning 
with  trepidation,  because  he  had  had  a  letter  from  a  gentle¬ 
man  saying  that  he  was  coming  to  the  City  Temple  that 
day  to  make  a  philosophical  analysis  of  the  sermon.  After 
a  long  pause  Dr.  Parker  added,  “  I  may  add  that  my 
trepidation  is  somewhat  mitigated  by  the  fact  that  the 
gentleman  spells  philosophical  with  an  f.” 

When  Dr.  Burford  Hooke  became  editor  of  the  Inde¬ 
pendent  and  Nonconformist  Dr.  Parker  promised  an 
occasional  contribution  to  its  columns.  And  he  kept  the 
promise — at  least  once.  Then  when  Dr.  Parker  promoted 
his 'Mansion  House  conference  on  London’s  spiritual  needs, 
he  sought  Dr.  Hooke’s  aid  in  “booming  ”  the  conference. 
I  interviewed  Dr.  Parker  about  it  and  published  the  inter¬ 
view  in  the  Independent  and  Nonconformist.  Moreover, 
I  had  the  conference  reported  verbatim,  and  the  report 
appeared  in  a  supplement  to  the  paper — published  on  the 
day  after  the  conference,  which  was  held  on  a  Wednesday. 
At  his  Thursday  midday  service  next  day  Dr.  Parker  urged 


Dr.  Parker 


71 


his  hearers  to  buy  the  Independent  and  Nonconformist, 
which  he  said  contained  the  fullest  account  of  the  meet¬ 
ing.  “I  have  no  interest  in  the  paper,”  he  said.  “I  have 
never  seen  it  before ;  but  this  report  is  a  feat  of  energy, 
enterprise  and  ingenuity,  which  I  feel  I  must  bring  under 
your  notice.” 

I  heard  Dr.  Parker  add  his  postscript  to  the  Acts  of 
the  Apostles.  It  was  about  the  time  that  Jabez  Spencer 
Balfour  had  gone  to  prison  over  the  Liberator  frauds.  Dr. 
Parker  had  lost  money  in  that  bubble  and  was  very  sore 
about  it.  His  postscript,  which  he  read  at  one  of  his 
Thursday  midday  services,  was  never,  I  think,  published. 
It  began  :  “And  St.  Paul,  standing  on  the  steps  of  his 
own  cathedral,  infinitely  greater  than  the  sacred  pile  itself, 
cried,  ^  O,  ye  men  of  London,  I  perceive  that  with  all  your 
sagacity  you  are  putting  money  into  bags  with  holes  in 
them,  for  on  the  way  here  I  saw  a  shrine  marked, 
“Liberator;  houses  builded  on  the  sand.”  ’  ”  He  made  St. 
Paul  protest  against  pleasant  Sunday  afternoons,  and  ex¬ 
pressed  a  wish  to  make  some  men’s  Sunday  afternoons 
“decidedly  unpleasant.”  Altogether  it  was  a  daring 
Parkerism  in  very  doubtful  taste,  but  unconscionably 
clever,  in  its  mimicry  of  New  Testament  phraseology. 

Stories  of  Dr.  Parker  and  “gems”  from  Dr.  Parker’s 
sermons  (many  of  them  invented)  were  at  one  time  the 
stock-in-trade  of  Nonconformist  humorists.  Certainly  he 
often  said  very  unexpected  things  in  the  pulpit.  He  had 
a  playwright’s  eye  for  a  climax.  Once  in  a  sermon  on 
bringing  up  a  child  in  the  way  he  should  go  (he  threw  all 
the  emphasis  on  the  pronoun  he),  Dr.  Parker  asked  how  a 
child  should  be  trained  in  sabbath  observance.  He  pic¬ 
tured  Sunday  in  a  stern  Sabbatarian  home:  “Rise  at 
seven,  family  prayers.  Breakfast  at  eight  o’clock,  Sunday 
school  at  nine,  church  at  ten-thirty,  then  home  to  cold 
dinner.  One  hour  of  l^oxe’s  '  Book  of  Martyrs,’  then 
Sunday  school  at  two.  Home  to  tea,  then  another  hour 

F 


72 


The  Best  I  Remember 


of  Foxe’s  *  Book  of  Martyrs,’  then  hymns  round  the  piano¬ 
forte.  Then  evening  church  followed  by  cold  supper, 
more  hymns  round  the  pianoforte,  family  prayers.  Then 
to  bed.  Bring  up  a  child  in  the  way  he  should  go,  and 
when  he  grows  old  he  will  not  depart  from  it.”  (A  long 
pause.)  Then  in  his  loudest  voice  :  “  Won^t  he?  ” 

Dr.  Parker  managed  his  financial  affairs  astutely.  But 
he  sank  half  his  fortune  in  his  last  years  upon  an  annuity 
upon  the  joint  lives  of  himself  and  his  wife.  Mrs.  Parker 
died  before  him  and  the  blow  shattered  his  happiness. 

He  was  really  a  very  lonely  man,  partially  from  shy¬ 
ness  and  partially  from  his  habit  of  holding  aloof  from  his 
ministerial  confreres.  In  Mrs.  Parker  he  found  an  absoi'b- 
ing  companion  and  a  very  wise  counsellor,  especially  in 
the  supervision  of  his  correspondence.  How  many 
breaches  of  friendship  she  must  have  spared  him  by 
getting  him  to  “sleep  over”  a  letter  he  had  written  and 
then  persuading  him  to  tear  it  up  in  the  morning.  I  heard 
Dr.  Parker  preach  at  the  Thursday  service  a  fortnight  after 
her  death,  and  saw  him  shake  with  bitter  sobbing  as  he 
read  to  his  congregation  her  burial  certificate  with  the 
words,  “Unconsecrated  ground,”  printed  on  the  form. 
After  Mrs.  Parker’s  death  Dr.  Parker  immured  himself 
in  his  home  at  Hampstead.  The  zest  for  life  had  gone 
out  of  him.  The  only  flame  left  burning  in  him  was  his 
passion  for  preaching.  That  he  never  lost. 


CHAPTER  XI 


NEWMAN  HALL,  MCLAREN,  BERRY 

Dr.  NEWjNIAN  hall  was  a  very  old  man,  somewhere 
about  eighty,  and  an  extinct  volcano  when  I  came  into 
immediate  contact  with  him.  He  found  it  very  hard  to  retire. 
With  old  age  vanity  grew  upon  him,  as  it  often  does  with 
aged  men  when  they  feel  their  life  work  is  done  and  that  they 
lag  superfluous  on  the  scene.  At  his  own  request  I  once 
interviewed  him  at  Hampstead,  and  he  spent  the  best  part 
of  a  very  long  afternoon  recalling  his  earlier  triumphs  on 
platforms  and  in  pulpits.  The  secret  of  his  popularity 
evaded  me.  His  intellectual  force  was  never  notable,  and 
his  eloquence  was  thin.  His  famous  tract,  “Come  to 
Jesus,”  had  a  good  title  for  that  period.  Somehow  Dr. 
Newman  Hall  gained  a  large  following,  and  Christ  Church, 
Westminster  Bridge  Road,  is  an  ornate  monument  to  his 
influence  in  South  London.  He  once  crept  into  Tenny¬ 
son’s  garden  near  Freshwater,  and  emerging  suddenly 
from  a  bush'  intercepted  the  Poet  Laureate  as  he  was 
strolling  dreamily  down  one  of  the  paths.  Tennyson 
looked  at  the  card  with  which  the  intruder  introduced 
himself.  Then  handing  it  back  he  said  brusquely,  “I  do 
not  know  Surrey  Chapel,  and  1  don’t  want  to  know  Dr. 
Newman  Hall.”  A  year  or  two  before  he  died  Dr.  Newman 
Hall  wrote  to  the  editor  of  the  Christian  World  saying  that 
he  understood  that  advance  obituaries  of  public  men  were 
kept  in  type  in  newspaper  offices,  and  adding  that  if  the 
editor  had  his  (Dr.  Newman  Hall’s)  obituary  notice  pre¬ 
pared  he  would  be  pleased  in  the  interests  of  accuracy 
to  revise  it  himself.  The  strange  request  was  complied 
with.  Quite  a  number  of  public  men  must  have  involun- 

73 


74 


The  Best  I  Remember 


tarily  read  their  own  obituaries,  prematurely  published 
(owing,  as  Mark  Twain  said,  to  some  rumour  of  their 
death  having  been  grossly  exaggerated),  but  Dr.  Newman 
Hall  is,  as  far  as  I  know,  the  only  man  who  ever  sought 
the  privilege. 

Dr.  Alexander  McLaren  gave  me  the  first  interview 
he  had  ever  given  to  a  newspaper  man.  I  fancy  it  was 
the  only  time  he  ever  was  formally  interviewed.  I  was 
writing  a  series  of  articles  for  the  Temple  Magazine 
(founded  and  edited  by  my  old  friend  Mr.  F.  A.  Atkins) 
on  “Churches  That  Live  and  Move,”  and  we  were 
especially  anxious  to  include  Union  Chapel,  Manchester, 
in  the  sequence.  Dr.  McLaren  was  reluctant  to  be  inter¬ 
viewed  or  photographed  in  his  study.  “By  the  grace  of 
God,”  he  wrote,  “I  have  so  far  escaped  the  noisome 
pestilence  of  the  interviewer.”  Under  a  little  gentle 
pressure  he  relaxed  and  asked  me  to  visit  him  at  Man¬ 
chester.  I  went  up  on  the  date  fixed,  but  Dr.  McLaren 
had  been  taken  ill  just  as  he  was  leaving  Niton — a  spot 
in  the  Isle  of  Wight  of  which  he  was  very  fond — for 
Manchester,  so'  my  journey  was  in  vain.  I  wrote  to  Dr. 
McLaren  after  an  interval  and  again  sought  an  inter¬ 
view.  This  time  he  replied  in  a  very  cordial  letter  agreeing 
to  my  request,  but  forbidding  me  to  make  another  special 
journey  to  Manchester  as  he  would  shortly  be  in  London 
and  would  arrange  to  give  me  an  hour  or  two  there.  The 
interview  took  place  in  a  Southampton  Row  temperance 
hotel — in  a  rather  dingy  parlour.  Dr.  McLaren  was  lying 
on  a  sofa,  just  recovering  from  a  severe  attack  of  dysentery 
and  looking  very  old  and  worn.  But  in  a  few  minutes  he 
was  talking  with  the  utmost  vivacity,  with  his  eyes  sparkling 
and  his  whole  face  aglow  with  eagerness.  In  repose 
Dr.  McLaren ’s  normal  expression  was  hard,  dour,  almost 
sardonic ;  but  in  a  flash,  if  something  interested  or  pleased 
him,  his  countenance  broke  into  a  perfectly  heavenly  smile 


Newman  Hall,  McLaren,  Berry  75 

— the  sort  of  smile  that  lingers  in  memory  as  something 
imperishable.  Dr.  McLaren  was  rather  an  exasperating 
subject  for  an  interviewer.  He  said  the  most  interesting 
things,  downright  indiscreet  things  (which,  of  course, 
make  the  best  “copy”),  but  having  said  them  he  would 
purse  his  lips  in  a  roguish  way  and  say,  “I’m  thinking 
that  that  will  not  have  to  go  into  the  interview  :  you’ll 
leave  it  out,  won’t  you?”  I  recall  one  thing  he  said, 
which  he  was  reluctant  at  first  to  have  published.  We 
were  talking  about  the  autonomous  government  of  Baptist 
and  Congregational  Churches,  its  advantages  and  its 
drawbacks,  and  he  suddenly  rapped  out,  with  mischief 
in  his  twinkling  eyes,  “But  democracy  always  has  draw¬ 
backs.  Democracy  is  only  the  finest  governmental  system 
the  world  has  seen  when  it  has  a  splendid  autocrat  at  the 
head  of  it.” 

After  this  meeting  in  London  I  frequently  saw  Dr. 
McLaren  in  London  and  in  Manchester,  and  we  had  some 
irregular  correspondence.  In  any  business  relations  over 
his  books  Dr.  McLaren  knew  how  to  make  a  bargain. 
His  wealth  came  mainly  from  his  book  royalties.  His 
will,  and  the  fortune  he  left  surprised  his  Baptist 
friends.  I  once  heard  an  ex-president  of  the  Baptist 
Union  say  in  a  very  severe  tone,  “Don’t  mention 
Alexander  McLaren  to  me  !  He  died  a  very  wealthy  man 
and  did  not  leave  a  penny  to  any  Baptist  charity  or 
denominational  cause.”  At  one  time  Dr.  McLaren’s 
volumes  of  sermons  went  into  most  ministers’  libraries. 
They  were  mines  of  rich  illustrative  ore  for  preachers. 
But  I  scarcely  ever  see  a  McLaren  volume  on  a  minister’s 
bookshelves  nowadays.  His  close  expository  method  of 
preaching  may  have  gone  out  of  fashion,  but  it  might 
be  revived  with  advantage.  As  a  preacher  Dr.  McLaren, 
among  many  greater  qualities,  had  an  amazing  power  of 
perfectly  withering  irony.  I  can  hear  him  now  in 
imagination,  hissing  out  some  scathingly  ironical  phrase 


76  The  Best  I  Remember 

and  see  his  thin  lips  exploding  as  he  finished  the 
sentence. 

Few  Free  Church  ministers  have  left  happier 
memories  behind  them  than  Dr.  Charles  Albert  Berry  of 
Wolverhampton.  It  is  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  since 
he  died,  and  he  was  only  forty-six  at  the  time  of  his 
death,  but  his  name  lives  and  a  fragrant  atmosphere 
pervades  all  remembrances  of  him.  An  invitation  to 
succeed  Henry  Ward  Beecher  at  Plymouth  Church, 
Brooklyn,  projected  Dr.  Berry  into  universal  fame,  but 
it  did  not  spoil  him.  He  never  pretended  that  he  was  a 
preacher  of  the  Beecher  calibre,  but  I  think  he  enjoyed 
the  popularity  that  came  through  Beecher’s  nomination 
of  him  as  his  own  successor.  The  Free  Churches  are 
murderous  in  their  demands  on  their  popular  men,  and 
Charles  Albert  Berry’s  sudden  popularity  really  cost  him 
his  life.  Preaching,  speaking  and  travelling  wore  him 
out  prematurely.  My  own  idea  was,  however,  that  Dr. 
Berry  exhausted  his  vitality  less  by  preaching  and  speak¬ 
ing  than  by  spending  so  much  energy  on  vivacious  talk 
after  his  engagements.  Berry  thought — and  I  think 
he  was  right — that  good  conversation  is  the  best  fun  in 
this  world,  and  given  a  congenial  host  and  a  few  listeners 
he  would  sit  up  talking  till  the  small  hours  of  the  morning. 
A  late  night  with  Dr.  Berry  was  a  thing  to  be  remem¬ 
bered.  His  talk  was  racy,  and  he  was  a  rare  raconteur. 
He  used  to  tell  with  gusto  a  story  of  one  of  his  deacons 
coming  one  morning  into  his  study,  very  irate  and  waving 
a  Wolverhampton  Star  in  his  hand.  “Dr.  Berry,  have 
you  see  what  the  Star  says  this  morning  ?  ”  he  asked. 

“No.  What  does  it  say?”  asked  Dr.  Berry. 

The  deacon  read  the  opening  passage  of  the  leader, 
which  began  in  this  strain:  “Dr.  Charles  Berry,  who  is 
paid  ^800  a  year  by  Queen  Street  Church  for  preaching 
what  he  does  not  practise,  etc.” 


Newman  Hall,  McLaren,  Berry  77 

“  What  shall  we  do  about  it  ?  ”  asked  the  aggrieved 
deacon. 

Dr.  Berry  paused  as  if  thinking  seriously,  and  then 
replied:  “Well,  I  suppose  you’ll  have  to  make  it  eight 
hundred  !  ” 

Before  settling  at  Wolverhampton  Dr.  Berry  was  a 
minister  at  Bolton,  and  he  loved  to  tell  Lancashire  stories. 
He  could  mimic  the  dialect  perfectly.  He  used  to  tell 
of  a  prayer  meeting  in  a  Lancashire  church  when  a 
working  man  offered  a  prayer,  in  which  he  said:  “O 
Lord,  Thou  hast  tried  me  in  many  ways.  Thou  hast  tried 
me  with  sickness  and  with  sorrow,  with  my  wife  and 
with  my  work ;  but  if  Thou  art  going  to  try  me  any  more, 
try  me,  if  it  pleases  Thee,  with  a  bit  o’  brass.” 

In  the  initiation  of  the  National  Free  Church  Council 
Dr.  Berry  exercised  a  great  influence.  He  stumped  Eng¬ 
land  on  its  behalf.  He  had  a  natural  gift  of  eloquence. 
Indeed,  his  fluency  of  speech  was  a  snare  to  him,  tempting 
him  to  shirk  preparation  of  his  speeches.  “I  can  always 
go  on  saying  something  till  I  have  something  to  say,” 
he  said  once.  When  he  was  Chairman  of  the  Congre¬ 
gational  Union  he  left  the  preparation  of  his  address 
(which  is  an  ex  cathedra  utterance  upon  which  most 
chairmen  bestow  infinite  pains)  until  the  very  eve  of  its 
delivery.  Then  he  rushed  into  the  Memorial  Hall,  asked 
to  be  shown  into  an  empty  room,  and,  sitting  doXvn,  wrote 
the  whole  address  at  a  sitting.  Moreover,  it  was  an 
exceedingly  good  address.  He  died  at  the  funeral  of  one 
of  his  own  intimate  friends. 

Much  of  Dr.  Berry’s  magnetic  charm  has  descended 
to  his  own  son.  Rev.  Sidney  M.  Berry,  who  succeeded 
Dr.  J.  H.  Jowett  at  Carrs  Lane  Chapel,  Birmingham,  and 
is  now  one  of  the  most  attractive  figures  in  the  Free 
Churches. 

Time  has  almost  obliterated  memories  of  the  Grindel- 
wald  Conferences  of  thirty  years  ago  on  the  Reunion  of 


The  Best  I  Remember 


78 

the  Churches,  and  I  think  Sir  Henry  Lunn  is  the  sole 
surviving  figure  of  the  little  earnest  company  that  dis¬ 
cussed  Church  unity  under!  the  shadow  of  the  Wetterhorn. 
Dr.  Charles  Albert  Berry,  Rev.  Hugh  Price  Hughes,  and 
Bishop  Perowne  of  Worcester  took  the  conferences  very 
seriously,  and  all  three  were  really  perturbed  at  the 
apathy  of  English  churchmen.  Established  and  Free,  over 
the  pious  picnic  conferences  in  the  Bernese  Oberland. 
Back  from  one  of  the  conventions.  Dr.  Berry  told  a  good 
Story  of  a  rejoinder  he  made  to  Bishop  Perowne  one  day. 
They  were  out  walking  one  day,  and  as  they  climbed  a 
gentle  slope  Dr.  Perowne  noticed  Dr.  Berry’s  sturdy  figure 
and  his  stout  knickerbockered  legs.  “You’ve  a  good  pair 
of  calves,  Dr.  Berry,”  said  the  bishop.  “You’d  do  well 
for  a  bishop.” 

“There,”  replied  Dr.  Berry,  “Eve  often  wondered  what 
qualifications  are  required  for  a  bishop.  Pm  glad  you’ve 
told  me.”  Then  Dr.  Berry  added  slyly  :  “But,  you  know, 
Dr.  Perowne,  that  puts  another  difficulty  in  the  way  of 
reunion,  for  in  the  Free  Churches  we  make  a  point  of 
selecting  our  leaders  for  their  qualities  at  the  other  end.” 


CHAPTER  XII 


J.  G.  STEVENSON  AND  DAN  CRAWFORD 

Even  yet  I  entertain  a  hope  that,  belated  though  it  will 
be,  w^e  shall  have  a  biography  of  Rev.  J.  G.  Stevenson 
of  Brighton,  Beckenham  and  Oxford — a  young  Congre¬ 
gational  minister  who  was  as  distinctive  a  character  as  the 
Free  Churches  have  ever  produced.  There  were  few 
things  that  Stevenson  could  not  do.  His  versatility  was 
amazing.  He  was  an  excellent  preacher,  the  best  speaker 
to  children  in  his  own  time,  a  brilliant  writer,  an  engaging 
platform  speaker,  a  bit  of  a  poet,  a  good  deal  of  a  humorist, 
a  potential  novelist — for  though  his  first  story,  “The  Up¬ 
lifted  Veil,”  missed  fire,  another  one  which  he  never 
finished  had  real  promise — and  the  author  of  one  or  two 
excellent  historical  studies  as  well  as  a  monograph  on 
temperament  which  was  both  recondite  and  amusing. 
Above  all,  Stevenson  had  the  genius  for  friendship. 
Though  dogged  by  ill-health,  he  raced  through  mountains 
of  work  and  took  a  degree  at  the  Royal  University  of 
Ireland  while  he  was  in  charge  of  a  large  suburban  church 
and  in  the  midst  of  heavy  literary  commitments.  He  was 
a  voracious  reader,  and  he  digested  what  he  read.  His 
habit  was  to  grind  at  a  book  till  he  had  mastered  its  con¬ 
tents.  Then  he  dictated  a  precis  of  its  contents  to  his 
typist.  The  very  act  of  dictation,  he  used  to  say,  fastened 
upon  his  mind  whatever  was  worth  remembering  in  a 
book.  Stevenson  always  insisted  that  he  got  nothing 
worth  having  out  of  his  theological  college  training.  On 
the  other  hand,  I  have  heard  men  who  were  at  Hackney 
College  with  him  declare  that  they  got  a  very  great  deal 
out  of  Stevenson. 


79 


8o 


The  Best  I  Remember 


Unless  a  biography  is  given  us  of  Stevenson,  I  imagine 
he  will  live  in  his  first  book,  “The  Christ  of  the  Children.” 
I  am  always  proud  to  think  I  persuaded  him  to  write  that 
book.  I  had  been  seeking  vainly  for  a  Life  of  Jesus  for  my 
own  small  boys — a  Life  written  in  a  vein  free  from  the 
sickly  sentimentality  of  most  of  the  Jesus  story  books  for 
children,  and  written  also  in  the  light  of  modern  criticism, 
so  that,  without  any  direct  reference  to  critical  questions, 
the  book  would  give  children  nothing  of  which  they  might 
have  to  unload  their  minds  as  their  knowledge  grew.  I 
could  find  nothing  of  the  kind,  and  I  thought  Stevenson 
could  do  one  well.  He  caught  the  idea  at  once,  and  carried 
it  out  perfectly.  It  pleased  both  orthodox  and  heterodox 
people,  and  delighted  the  little  people  for  whom  it  was 
written.  Stevenson  fell  in  with  my  suggestion  that  the 
illustrations  should  be  reproductions  of  great  masterpieces 
of  religious  art,  but  I  had  a  struggle  with  him  over  Hoff¬ 
mann’s  “  Christ  in  Gethsemane,’’  which  he  wanted  included 
and  which  I  rejected  as  too  sentimental.  He  afterwards 
wrote  a  weekly  column  for  children  in  the  Christian  World, 
and  kept  up  an  amazing  level  of  interest  and  freshness  for 
about  ten  years.  This  brought  him  letters  from  all  over 
the  world,  and  there  must  have  been  many  sorrowful  young 
hearts  when  he  was  cut  off  in  quite  early  manhood. 

Stevenson  was  the  blithest  soul  I  ever  met.  He  was 
almost  incredibly  cheerful.  When  the  mad  mood  came 
upon  him  he  was  a  perfect  imp  of  mischief.  His  field  day 
was  always  the  day  when  the  Free  Church  ministers  who 
golf  played  for  their  challenge  cup  and  medals.  Steven¬ 
son  generally  tore  up  his  card  about  the  third  hole  out  in 
the  first  round,  and  then  let  himself  go.  His  partner  never 
won  the  cup  either.  After  the  contest  the  competitors 
usually  repaired  to  Whitefields  to  drink  the  health  of  the 
victor  from  the  challenge  cup — flowing  with  steaming  tea. 
Then  Stevenson  coruscated.  One  year,  on  cup  day,  he 
hit  upon  the  idea  of  playing  an  elaborate  joke  on  Mr.  Silas 


J.  G.  Stevenson  and  Dan  Crawford  8i 


K.  Hocking,  the  novelist,  who,  as  an  ex-minister,  always 
competed  (vainly)  for  the  golf  cup.  Stevenson  first  dis¬ 
patched  a  telegram  to  Mrs.  Hocking  announcing  that  her 
husband  had  won  the  cup.  Later  he  got  a  telegram 
handed  in  at  a  post  office  at  Crouch  End  addressed  to 
Mr.  Hocking  at  Whitefields,  and  purporting  to  come  from 
the  Mayor  of  Hornsey,  congratulating  the  novelist  on  his 
victory  and  intimating  that  the  Hornsey  town  band  with 
the  fire  brigade  would  meet  him  by  the  9.30  train  to  convey 
the  cup  home  in  triumph.  Being  at  Whitefields  when 
the  telegram  reached  Mr.  Hocking  enabled  Stevenson  to 
carry  the  joke  to  further  stages,  till  the  complications  of 
the  affair  simply  left  Mr.  Hocking  gasping.  I  think 
Silvester  Horne  was  an  accomplice  before  the  fact.  I 
know  Rev.  Thomas  Yates  was.  The  comedy  dissolved 
in  the  utmost  good  humour.  Mr.  Silas  Hocking  can  take 
a  joke.  Occasionally  Stevenson’s  waggish  ways  annoyed 
ultra-serious  folk  who  did  not  understand  his  temperament, 
but  generally  he  was  regarded  with  affection — which  his 
generosity  of  spirit  inspired. 

Once  I  was  golfing  with  him  at  Lewes  when  Alderman 
Carden  of  Brighton  joined  us.  Mr.  Carden  was  wearing 
a  golfing  suit  made  of  cloth  with  a  pattern  of  huge  squares. 
Stevenson  greeted  the  alderman  with  the  question, 
“Where’s  the  horse?”  All  the  way  round  the  links  he 
would  say,  “It’s  your  move,  Carden,”  by  way  of  suggest¬ 
ing  that  the  alderman’s  coat  was  a  chessboard.  Alderman 
Carden,  who  was  the  first  Socialist  Mayor  of  Brighton — 
and  an  excellent  mayor,  too^ — enjoyed  Stevenson’s  sallies, 
and  scored  a  point  or  two  very  neatly  in  the  exchange  of 
good-natured  persiflage. 

Through  Stevenson  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  Dan 
Crawford,  that  eccentric  and  lovable  man  who  spent 
twenty-seven  unbroken  years  in  the  long-grass  area  of 
Central  Africa  as  a  “Brethren  ”  missionary  to  the  Garan- 
gense  people.  Stevenson  had  brought  together  a  com- 


82 


The  Best  I  Remember 


pany  of  Free  Church  ministers  and  laymen  to  meet 
Crawford  at  luncheon  at  the  Strand  Palace  Hotel.  Every¬ 
one  present  had  read  Dan  Crawford’s  strange  book, 
“Thinking  Black,”  and  all  were  so  eager  to  ply  him  with 
questions  that  the  luncheon  hour  extended  until  tea-time. 
When  I  was  leaving  I  mentioned  that  I  had  Mr.  Francis 
Seton  Thompson,  the  “Wild  Animals  at  Home” 
naturalist,  dining  with  me  that  night  at  my  club.  Steven¬ 
son  suggested  that  it  would  be  great  fun  to  bring  Dan 
Crawford  and  Seton  Thompson  together,  and  we  agreed 
to  make  a  dinner  party  of  four.  It  was  one  of  the  oddest 
seances  in  my  experience.  Mr.  Seton  Thompson  could 
not  make  head  nor  tail  of  Mr.  Dan  Crawford,  and  Mr. 
Dan  Crawford  did  not  know  what  to  make  of  Mr.  Seton 
Thompson.  Suddenly  both  began  slanging  civilization, 
and  instantly  they  were  as  bosom  friends — knit  together, 
it  seemed,  by  a  common  hate.  Both  men  loved  the  wild 
and  had  heard  its  call  in  their  souls,  and,  figuratively 
speaking,  they  fell  on  each  other’s  necks  on  discovering 
that  they  both  loathed  the  ways  of  cities  and  the  dismal 
unsatisfying  materialism  of  modern  civilization. 

Mr.  Seton  Thompson  told  a  story  of  an  old  Indian 
whom  he  had  brought  down  from  one  of  the  reservations  to 
show  him  New  York.  He  took  the  old  red  man  down 
Broadway — “the  Great  White  Way  ” — at  night,  took  him 
over  Brooklyn  Bridge,  took  him  on  the  overhead  railway 
and  in  the  underground  railway,  showed  him,  in  fact,  all 
the  feverish  ways  of  the  great  American  city.  At  last  he 
took  the  bewildered  old  Indian  to  the  Grand  Central  depot 
to  see  him  off  back  to  his  reservation.  Not  till  then  had  he 
asked  the  old  man  what  he  thought  of  New  York.  Then 
he  put  the  question.  The  old  Indian  thought  in  silence 
for  a  minute  or  two,  and  then  replied  :  “Mr.  Seton  Thomp¬ 
son,  in  the  land  from  which  I  come  we  have  no  bridges 
to  span  our  great  rivers,  no  great  white  ways  to  spoil  the 
darkness  of  the  night  sky,  no  trains  under  the  land  and 


J.  G.  Stevenson  and  Dan  Crawford  83 

over  the  land ;  but  we,  Mr.  Seton  Thompson,  we  have  peace 
of  mind  !  ” 

Mr.  Dan  Crawford,  delighted  with  the  story,  capped  it 
with  an  even  better.  “I  have  lived,”  he  said,  “so  long  in 
the  long  grass  that  I  think  like  the  blacks,  and  I  never 
talk  of  Western  European  civilization.  But  just  when  I 
was  coming  home  and  was  thinking  perhaps  tenderly  of 
old  scenes  and  faces,  I  did  one  night  swank  a  bit  about 
civilization  to  an  old  Bantu  who  was  sitting  with  me  in 
my  hut.  I  told  him  that  I  was  going  to  my  own  country, 
where  they  had  ships  that  went  under  the  water,  other 
ships  that  went  on  the  water,  and  still  more  ships  that 
flew  over  the  water.  I  told  him  that  in  English  houses 
you  turn  a  tap  and  the  water  flows,  touched  a  button  and 
the  room  was  flooded  with  light — in  fact,  I  gave  him  a 
good  glowing  description  of  all  the  alleged  triumphs  of 
civilization.  When  I  had  catalogued  as  much  as  I  could 
remember  I  stopped  and  waited  for  the  old  negro  to  show 
his  surprise.  But  the  old  negro  just  said  : 

Is  that  all,  Mr.  Crawford?  ’ 

“‘Yes,  I  think  it  is,’  I  replied. 

“Then  very  slowly  and  very  gravely  the  old  Bantu 
said  : 

“‘  Well,  Mr.  Crawford,  you  know,  to  be  better  off  is 
not  to  be  better.’  ” 

Some  years  ago,  just  before  the  war,  it  was  suggested 
to  me  that  I  should  go  out  to  the  South  Seas  as  one  of 
a  deputation  to  visit  the  London  Missionary  Society’s 
stations  in  the  Pacific  Islands  and  in  New  Guinea.  I 
could  not  go,  but  1  have  always  lamented  that  I  could  not. 
I  feel  that  that  journey  would  have  settled  a  question  which 
is  always  somewhere  at  the  back  of  my  mind — the  question 
whether,  if  I  had  to  make  a  choice,  I  would  sooner  be  a 
w^orking  man  in  Poplar  or  a  Papuan  living  in  savagery  in 
New  Guinea.  PYr  the  life  of  me  I  cannot  answer  the 


84  The  Best  I  Remember 

question  until  I  have  seen  Papua;  but  knowing  Poplar, 
and  having  read  a  great  deal  about  Papua,  I  cannot  help 
thinking  that  the  advantage  lies  with  the  savage.  He  may 
be  haunted  by  dread  of  evil  spirits,  but  he  is  not  haunted 
by  fear  of  unemployment,  and  all  the  horror  that  spells. 
And  at  least  the  Papuan  basks  in  the  sunshine  and  sees 
the  blue  sky,  and  if  he  has  not  heard  of  all  the  enriching 
conveniences  and  pleasures  of  civilized  life,  he  is  no  worse 
off  than  the  Poplar  man,  who  hears  of  them  all  but  enjoys 
none  of  them. 


CHAPTER  XIII 


THE  HUMOURS  OF  PAGEANTRY 

The  Free  Churches  have  been  shedding  their  austerities 
very  rapidly  in  the  last  thirty  years.  The  old  dissent¬ 
ing  prejudices  against  the  theatre,  cards,  billiards,  dancing 
and  even  boxing  seem  to  be  swiftly  passing  away.  It 
was  left  to  a  professional  stage  manager,  Mr.  Hugh  Moss, 
to  boast  (during  the  run  of  “The  Pageant  of  Darkness 
and  Light,”  staged  at  the  Missionary  Exhibition,  “The 
Orient  in  London  ”)  that  “the  car  of  Thespis  has  been 
driven  right  through  the  camp  of  Nonconformity.”  Truly 
it  had.  I  had  some  measure  of  responsibility  for  the 
production  of  that  pageant,  and  I  cannot  pretend  to  be 
penitent  about  it.  The  committee  which  was  promoting 
“The  Orient  in  London”  in  the  interests  of  the  London 
Missionary  Society  decided  to  stage  a  pageant  as  a  huge 
side-show.  A  sub-committee  was  entrusted  with  the  pro¬ 
duction,  and  this  sub-committee  laid  its  plans  on  a  very 
ambitious  scale.  Mr.  John  Oxenham,  the  novelist,  under¬ 
took  to  write  the  libretto.  Mr.  Hugh  Moss  was  engaged 
to  produce  the  pageant.  The  music  was  entrusted  to 
Mr.  Hamish  MacCunn,  the  distinguished  composer  and 
conductor.  About  ten  weeks  before  the  date  for  the  open¬ 
ing  of  the  exhibition  the  “  Pageant  of  Darkness  and  Light  ” 
was — so  far  as  the  music  was  concerned — still  in  the  brain 
of  the  composer.  And  all  the  other  arrangements  were 
in  chaos.  Mr.  F.  A.  Atkins  and  I  w^ere  asked  to  con¬ 
stitute  ourselves  as  a  committee  of  ways  and  means  to  deal 
with  the  pageant.  And  a  frightful  time  we  had  over  it. 
Mr.  Stanley  Holmes,  now  M.P.  for  N.E.  Derbyshire 
and  a  rising  hope  of  Independent  Liberalism,  shared  the 

85 


86 


The  Best  I  Remember 


burden  with  us.  Up  to  that  late  hour  the  general  com¬ 
mittee  believed  that  the  pageant  would  be  in  dumb  show, 
with  no  speaking  on  the  stage.  But  when  Mr.  Atkins 
and  I  met  Mr.  Hamish  MacCunn,  he  staggered  us  by 
saying,  “I  don’t  know  about  "  no  speaking  on  the  stage  ’ ; 
I  am  writing  grand  opera.”  And  grand  opera  he  did 
write — in  the  music-drama  style.  The  general  committee 
had  budgeted  for  an  expenditure  of  /^i,ooo  on  the  pageant, 
but  before  the  curtain  went  up  on  the  opening  night  we 
had  spent  ,^5,000.  We  had  no  option.  We  were  given 
a  huge  barn — the  annexe  of  the  Agricultural  Hall,  usually 
used  for  the  pig-pens  at  the  Royal  show — and  we  had  to 
convert  it  into  a  grand  opera  house  with  a  stage  large 
enough  for  700  performers,  with  dressing-rooms  for  the 
same  number,  elaborate  scenery  for  five  episodes  (repre¬ 
senting  the  eternal  snows  of  North  Canada,  a  suttee  scene 
in  India,  the  meeting  of  Livingstone  and  Stanley  at  Ujiji, 
the  defiance  of  Pele  by  Queen  Kapiolani  in  Hawaii,  and 
a  final  gathering  of  all  the  nations  of  the  earth  around 
the  Rock  of  Ages),  and  in  addition  we  had  to  erect  seats 
on  a  temporary  sloping  floor  for  4,000  spectators,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  creation  of  a  thousand  costumes,  some  of 
which  necessitated  careful  research  in  the  interests  of  strict 
accuracy.  A  great  pit  for  the  orchestra  had  to  be  ex¬ 
cavated  in  the  concrete  floor,  and  about  eleven  hundred 
“properties  ”  had  to  be  provided.  The  original  idea  was 
to  trust  to  volunteer  amateur  pageanteers.  But  that  notion 
had  to  be  abandoned,  and  a  professional  Orchestra  and  a 
chorus  with  a  nucleus  of  professional  actors  and  singers 
had  to  be  engaged. 

All  the  time  the  general  committee  (which  was  confident 
that  the  exhibition  itself  would  be  a  tremendous  financial 
success)  was  in  a  ferment  of  alarm  at  the  soaring  expendi¬ 
ture  on  the  pageant  (which  they  were  confident  would  run 
them  into  a  dead  loss).  They  were  horribly  apprehensive, 
too,  that  the  stern  old  school  of  Nonconformists,  who  had 


The  Humours  of  Pageantry  87 

not  shed  their  prejudices  against  the  theatre,  would  revolt 
against  the  theatricality  of  the  pageant.  I  confess  I  had  my 
own  doubts  about  this;  but  my  responsibility  was  not  for 
the  initiation  of  the  pageant  but  for  its  production.  The 
doubts  were  dissipated  on  the  opening  night,  for  the 
pageant  was  not  merely  a  lovely  spectacle  and  a  feast  of 
splendid  music  but  also  a  very  ennobling  presentation  of 
the  Conquests  of  the  Cross  !  A  negligible  minority  raised 
a  protest.  Dr.  Campbell  Morgan  objected  to  the  whole 
thing  and  refused  to  attend  a  representation.  But  Rev. 
Silvester  Horne  saw  it,  or  parts  of  it,  three  or  four  times  a 
week,  Dr.  Jowett  saw  it  twice  and  expressed  his  warm 
appreciation.  So  did  Rev.  R.  J.  Campbell,  Dr.  Forsyth, 
and  many  other  eminent  ministers  of  many  denominations. 

London  is  a  curious  city,  as  our  odd  experience  with  this 
pageant  revealed.  Excellent  press  notices  were  published 
in  the  London  daily  papers,  and  money  was  spent  freely 
on  advertising.  But  for  ten  days  or  so  the  audiences  at 
the  pageant  were  alarmingly  small.  With  seats  for  4,000 
people  the  pageant  was  played  a  dozen  times  to  audiences 
of  less  than  a  thousand.  We  could  scarcely  induce  people 
to  accept  free  seats.  “Paper”  literally  went  begging. 
Then  some  crude  youth  (a  member,  we  discovered,  of  a 
Y.M.C.A.  at  Highbury)  wrote  a  letter  to  the  Daily  News 
indignantly  protesting  against  the  personation  of  David 
Livingstone  on  the  stage.  He  declared  that  it  was  a 
desecration  of  the  memory  of  a  Christian  hero.  Through 
our  energetic  press  agent  we  turned  a  battery  of  letters, 
in  defence  of  the  Livingstone  scene,  upon  the  Daily  News. 
All  the  letters  were  signed  by  prominent  Congrega- 
tionalists.  Mr.  A.  G.  Gardiner,  then  editor  of  the  Daily 
News,  generously  allocated  space  for  the  “silly  season  ” 
controversy.  We  found  it  necessary,  indeed,  to  get  some 
letters  written  in  a  vein  hostile  to  the  Livingstone  episode 
to  keep  the  controversy  going.  Other  newspapers  com¬ 
mented  on  the  correspondence,  and  in  turn  were  bombarded 

G 


88 


The  Best  I  Remember 


with  letters  engineered  by  our  wide-awake  press  agent.  The 
effect  was  magical.  Immediately  Londoners  began  to  flock 
to  the  Agricultural  Hall  to  see  this  very  much  discussed 
pageant.  From  that  time  onwards  the  pageant  was  played 
to  “capacity  houses,”  and  the  number  of  representations 
had  to  be  increased  from  forty  to  sixty.  In  the  last  ten 
days  of  the  exhibition  the  pageant  was  staged  twice  daily. 

Another  newspaper  correspondence  was  threatened  by 
someone  writing  to  the  Star  complaining  that  the  skirts  of 
the  Hawaiian  surf  maiden  were  too  short.  We  had  no  use 
for  that  sort  of  criticism,  and  nipped  that  matter  in  the  bud 
by  inviting  the  Star  man  to  come  and  measure  the  indicted 
skirts.  None  of  them  were  more  than  seven  inches  off  the 
ground — they  were  longer  by  far  than  women  wear  in  the 
streets  nowadays.  The  “  Pageant  of  Darkness  and  Light,” 
which  it  had  been  feared  would  impoverish  “The  Orient 
in  London,”  was  almost  the  only  source  of  profit  in  the 
exhibition.  Subsequently  the  scenery,  costumes  and 
acting  rights  were  sold  to  an  American  Missionary  Com¬ 
mittee  and  the  pageant  went  the  round  of  the  great  cities 
of  the  United  States  attracting  vast  audiences.  It  was 
never  reproduced  again  in  England,  though  the  music  has 
frequently  been  rendered  as  an  Oratorio. 

Mr.  Hamish  MacCunn,  whose  music  was  really  the 
secret  of  the  pageant’s  success,  died  during  the  war,  with 
a  wealth  of  unwritten  melody  in  his  soul.  I  had  met  him 
in  my  first  year  in  London  when  he  did  some  musical 
criticism  for  the  Manchester  Examiner,  upon  whose 
London  staff  I  was  engaged.  Then  I  never  saw  him  again 
for  eighteen  years.  He  had  not  realized — he  never  did 
realize — the  magnificent  promise  of  his  young  days.  In  the 
early  ’nineties  it  was  anticipated  that  he  would  dazzle  the 
musical  world  by  the  splendour  of  his  compositions;  but 
somehow  he  missed  his  tide.  His  gifts  were  prodigal, 
but  instead  of  triumphs  in  composing  grand  operas  he  had 
to  supplement  his  professional  work  as  a  teacher  at  the 


The  Humours  of  Pageantry  89 

Guildhall  School  of  Music  by  conducting  the  orchestra 
at  musical  comedy  theatres.  His  facility  as  a  composer 
was  astonishing.  When  the  music  of  the  Pageant  of 
Darkness  and  Light  was  actually  in  the  press  and  the  final 
rehearsals  were  in  progress,  Mr.  Hugh  Moss  found  that 
there  was  no  musical  accompaniment  for  the  suttee  scene 
where  an  Indian  widow  walked  seven  times  round  the  funeral 
pyre  of  her  husband  before  flinging  herself  on  the  flames. 
Moss  insisted  that  music  was  essential ;  MacCunn  wanted 
to  cut  out  the  widow’s  perambulation  of  the  pyre.  But 
Hugh  Moss  was  an  autocrat,  if  a  very  genial  one,  and  he 
got  his  way.  MacCunn  went  home  late  from  the  rehearsal, 
but  next  morning  brought  with  him  a  hauntingly  lovely 
choral  melody — quite  the  gem  of  the  pageant  music — 
which  was  sung  to  the  words,  “Blessed,  O  thrice  blessed, 
is  she  who  conquers  death.” 

Some  members  of  the  Orient  Exhibition  committee  were 
fearful  lest  the  voluntary  pageanteers  drawn  from  the 
London  Congregational  churches  might  be  corrupted  by 
close  association  with  the  professional  actors  and  actresses 
drawn  from  the  London  theatres.  Most  of  the  choristers 
engaged  by  Mr.  Hamish  MacCunn  had  been  associated 
with  him  in  Gilbert  and  Sullivan  operas,  and  were  men 
and  women  with  whom  it  was  really  a  pleasure  to  co¬ 
operate.  But  one  member  of  the  Orient  Committee,  in 
addressing  the  whole  company  at  the  final  rehearsal,  gave 
expression  to  his  fears.  It  was  done  in  a  kindly  spirit, 
but  the  phrasing  was  somewhat  unfortunate,  and  he  seemed 
to  divide  the  pageanteers  into  two  groups  :  (i)  Christians 
taking  part  in  the  pageant  as  an  act  of  service  to  foreign 
missions,  and  (2)  those  who  v/ere  doing  so  in  the  ordinary 
course  of  their  professional  work.  When  the  rehearsal 
was  resumed  it  was  quite  evident  something  was  going 
wrong.  It  certainly  was.  All  the  professionals  were  “on 
strike.”  Hamish  MacCunn  (whO'  was  a  member  of  Dr. 
Monro  Gibson’s  Presbyterian  Church  at  St.  John’s  Wood) 


go 


The  Best  I  Remember 


was  offended  too.  The  committee  man  who  had  all  un¬ 
consciously  disturbed  the  atmosphere  by  his  betise,  was 
aghast  when  I  told  him  that  his  speech  had  given  offence. 
Without  a  second’s  hesitation  he  stood  up  on  a  chair,  and 
in  the  most  unequivocal  way  apologized  for  the  pain  and 
misunderstanding  he  had  unwittingly  occasioned.  If  only 
a  true  gentleman  can  make  an  apology,  he  certainly  demon¬ 
strated  his  essential  gentlemanliness.  The  apology  soothed 
all  the  wounded  spirits.  I  think  the  episode,  painful  as  it 
was  for  a  moment,  contributed  to  breaking  down  the  Free 
Church  hostility  to  the  stage. 

Our  worst  anxiety  in  connexion  with  the  pageant  came 
through  a  succession  of  thefts  in  the  dressing-rooms  of  the 
amateur  participants.  Nothing  was  lost  in  the  quarters  of 
the  professional  singers  and  choristers;  but  night  by  night 
we  had  complaints  that  a  purse,  a  handbag,  some  loose 
money  or  a  watch  had  disappeared  from  the  amateurs’ 
dressing-rooms.  I  began  to  dread  to  see  the  Rev.  Arthur 
Jarvis,  who  was  registrar  of  the  volunteer  pageanteers, 
come  into  my  office  in  the  pageant  hall.  “Another  con¬ 
founded  Christian  has  stolen  a  purse,”  he  would  say  in  a 
lugubrious  tone.  All  our  efforts  to  trace  the  thiet^es  failed, 
till  we  placed  a  professional  detective  in  each  of  the  large 
dressing-rooms.  Then  a  young  man  was  promptly  caught 
red-handed — with  stolen  goods  in  his  possession.  We 
found  that  he  had  no  real  connexion  with  any  church  nor 
with  the  L.M.S.,  but  had  somehow  managed  to  get  en¬ 
rolled  as  a  pageanteer,  with  the  intention,  no  doubt,  of 
rifling  any  pockets  that  he  found  convenient.  It  was 
thought  wise  not  to  prosecute  him.  So  he  was  quietly  put 
out  of  the  building  and  told  that  if  he  was  seen  in  Islington 
during  the  run  of  the  pageant  he  would  be  arrested  im¬ 
mediately.  Whether  the  thief  in  the  women’s  dressing- 
room  was  a  confederate  or  not  was  never  discovered;  but 
the  larcenies  stopped  there  simultaneously — much  to  our 
relief,  as  the  worry  of  it  had  been  distressing. 


CHAPTER  XIV 


DR.  CLIFFORD 

The  Bishop  of  London,  meeting  Dr.  John  Clifford  one 
day,  asked,  “How  is  my  old  friend?  ”  “Oh,  splendid, 
thank  you,”  the  octogenarian  replied;  “but  who  are  you 
calling  old?”  Nobody  has  ever  convinced  Dr.  Clifford 
that  he  is  even  getting  old.  He  simply  refuses  to  age. 
Once  when  he  called  on  me,  and  climbed  two  flights  of 
stairs  to  reach  my  room,  I  gently  scolded  him  for  not 
having  me  called  down,  by  telephone,  to  him.  “Why, 
anyone  might  think  Pm  an  old  man  !  ”  he  answered.  At 
eighty-four  he  was  knocked  down  by  a  taxicab  in  Trafalgar 
Square,  but  he  went  on  to  a  meeting.  Only  in  the  most 
casual  way  he  mentioned  the  accident  to  his  daughter  just 
before  bedtime.  Dr.  Clifford’s  perennial  youth  is  not 
physical  only — he  is  young  in  mind  and  outlook.  One 
day,  teasingly,  I  told  him  he  had  disappointed  me.  He 
was  quite  concerned.  Then  I  explained  why.  “Here,” 
I  said,  “London  University  has  set  up  a  D.D.  degree  open 
to  Free  Churchmen,  and  you’ve  let  ten  years  go  by  without 
sitting  for  it.”  Dr.  Clifford  laughed  at  my  mock  reproach¬ 
fulness.  “  I  had  thought  of  going  in  for  it,”  he  said,  “and 
I  should  still  love  to  do  the  reading  for  it;  but  I’m  too 
busy  to  sit  down  and  write  a  long  thesis.”  He  was  over 
eighty  at  the  time. 

Lord  Balfour  once  threw  an  ungracious  jibe  at  Dr. 
Clifford.  “I  don’t  like  his  style,”  he  said  superciliously. 
One  thought  of  Dr.  Clifford’s  life  story,  of  his  chfldhood  in 
a  straightened  if  Godly  home,  of  his  beginning  his  life  as 
a  boy  of  nine  by  working  twelve  hours  a  day  as  a  piecer 

91 


92 


The  Best  I  Remember 


in  a  lace  factory,  and  then  of  his  B.A.,  M.A.,  LL.B., 
B.Sc.  degrees,  earned  at  London  University  when  all  his 
studying  had  to  be  done  in  the  scanty  leisure  of  a  busy 
London  pastorate.  One  thought  of  Dr.  Clifford  getting 
up  at  five  o’clock  in  the  morning  to  meet  the  boys  from 
his  church  who  gathered  for  a  six  o’clock  Latin  lesson  from 
their  minister;  one  thought  of  this  man  who  has  slaved 
from  early  morning  till  late  at  night  for  sixty  years  to 
promote  every  sort  of  human  betterment;  of  his  scanty 
income — for  he  never  would  take  more  than  ;^6oo  a  year, 
and  when  he  was  given  a  national  testimonial  insisted  that 
the  amount  of  income  it  brought  him  should  reduce  his 
retiring  allowance  from  his  church.  One  thought  of  his 
scholarship,  his  splendour  of  character,  his  genuine  piety, 
his  overflowing  sympathy,  his  tenderness  and  his  simple 
modesty.  “Like  his  style,”  indeed  ! 

I  remember  Dr.  Clifford  telling  in  public,  on  an  occasion 
when  he  was  the  hero  of  a  great  day,  how  his  thoughts 
flew  back  over  a  long  vista  of  years  to  another  great  day 
in  his  life,  when  he  ran  home  and,  too  breathless  from 
running  to  speak  a  word,  proudly  threw  2S.,  his  first  week’s 
wages,  into  the  lap  of  his  mother.  During  the  twenty- 
five  years  I  have  known  Dr.  Clifford  I  have  never  seen  him 
impatient,  never  heard  him  say  an  ignoble  or  mean  word, 
and,  though  he  has  always  been  a  fighter,  I  have  never 
known  him  strike  a  blow  below  the  belt.  Upon  his  feet  I 
have  never  yet  detected  a  speck  of  clay.  He  is  a  hero 
who,  if  he  had  a  valet,  would  be  a  hero  even  to  him. 

A  little  episode  of  twenty  years  ago  in  which  Dr. 
Clifford  figured  large  comes  to  mind.  There  had  been  a 
Free  Church  meeting  at  the  Memorial  Hall  over  the  con¬ 
centration  camps  in  the  last  days  of  the  Boer  War.  The 
meeting  had  been  both  protracted  and  distracted.  When 
it  was  over  a  party  of  about  ten  of  us.  Dr.  Clifford  included, 
trooped  up  Ludgate  Hill  to  get  tea.  We  went  into  an 
A.B.C.  shop,  sat  down,  and  were  giving  our  orders  when 


Dr.  Clifford 


93 


Dr.  Clifford  asked  the  waitress  what  was  closing  time  of 
the  depot.  “Seven  o’clock,  sir,”  she  replied.  Dr.  Clifford 
pulled  out  his  watch.  “It’s  seven  minutes  to  seven  now,” 
he  said.  Then,  addressing  us  all,  he  said:  “This  girl 
will  be  kept  here  after  her  time  to  go  home,  if  we  have 
tea  now.  I’m  not  going  to  keep  her,”  and  he  picked  up 
his  hat  and  coat,  beckoned  us  to  follow,  and  led  us  out 
into  the  street.  That  action  was  perfectly  typical  of  John 
Clifford.  He  had  gone  through  life  giving  first  considera¬ 
tion  to  other  people.  His  Christianity  always  meant 
putting  himself  last. 

But  along  with  Dr.  Clifford’s  considerateness  has  gone 
moral  courage  of  a  high  order.  His  conscience  has  been 
his  lode  star.  Nothing  has  ever  made  him  deviate  from 
the  dictates  of  his  sensitive  conscience — neither  abuse, 
opposition,  unpopularity,  flattery,  persuasion  or  cajolery. 
In  November,  1918,  when  Dr.  Clifford  was  eighty-two. 
Sir  Albert  and  Sir  Evan  Spicer  gathered  together  a 
distinguished  company  of  public  men,  Anglicans  as  well 
as  Free  Churchmen,  at  a  luncheon  in  Dr.  Clifford’s 
honour.  Mr.  Lloyd  George  (who  had  just  announced  the 
general  election)  put  aside  a  State  engagement  to  be 
present,  and  in  a  speech,  tender  in  its  warm  affection  and 
unmeasured  in  its  appreciation,  paid  his  tribute  to  the  old 
Baptist  minister.  “There  is  no  man  in  England,”  said 
Mr.  Lloyd  George,  throwing  all  his  wonderful  powers  of 
emphasis  into  the  words,  “upon  whose  conscience  I  would 
sooner  ring  a  coin  than  upon  John  Clifford’s.”  An  hour 
afterwards,  as  we  were  coming  away  from  the  luncheon, 
I  walked  from  the  British  Empire  Club  with  Dr.  Clifford. 
I  asked  him  if  he  was  going  to  support  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
at  the  general  election.  “No,”  said  the  sea-green  in¬ 
corruptible,  “I  cannot  conscientiously  do  that.  No,  I 
cannot  follow  him.  I’ve  just  written  a  manifesto  urging 
Free  Churchmen  to  vote  for  Independent  Liberals  or 
Labour  candidates.  I  wish  you  would  get  it  printed  for 


94 


The  Best  I  Remember 


me.”  “You’d  better  let  us  publish  it  in  the  Christian 
World”  I  said,  and  Dr.  Clifford  agreed.  It  cost  Dr. 
Clifford  much  soreness  of  heart  to  break  away  from  Mr. 
Lloyd  George — they  had  fought  together  as  comrades  for 
twenty-five  years — and  ninety-nine  men  out  of  a  hundred 
would  have  been  cozened  back  to  the  Prime  Minister  by 
the  speech  he  had  just  made ;  but  to  Dr.  Clifford  the  mere 
thought  of  compromise  was  alien.  His  conscience  pointed 
his  course  and  he  took  it. 


CHAPTER  XV 


MR.  LLOYD  GEORGE 

NO  one  knowing  Mr.  Lloyd  Geofge  twenty-five  years 
ago  would  have  dreamed  that  he  was  capable  of  endur¬ 
ing  the  physical  and  nervous  strain  of  his  long  uninter¬ 
rupted  period  of  office.  My  first  recollection  of  him  is  as  a 
mere  wisp  of  a  man,  a  live  wire  certainly  at  that  time,  all 
nerves  and  vivacity,  but  with  the  physique  of  a  ’Varsity 
boat  coxswain.  I  saw  him  first  soon  after  his  entry  into 
Parliament  as  a  Welsh  Radical  who  was  expected  to  kick 
over  all  the  traces  and  make  the  House  of  Commons  sit  up 
and  take  notice  of  Welsh  Nationalism.  His  restless,  bright 
eyes  held  me  enchanted.  So  did  his  voice,  vibrant  and 
musical  then  as  it  is  now.  It  is  still  the  sweetest  speaking 
voice  among  British  politicians,  and  holds  the  secret  of  the 
wizardry  that  gets  Mr.  Lloyd  George  out  of  so  many 
tight  corners. 

One  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George’s  boldest  enterprises  almost 
landed  him  on  the  rocks.  He  was  the  fount  and  origin — 
I  might  say  almost  the  alpha  and  the  omega — of  the 
famous  Welsh  revolt  against  the  administration  of  the 
Balfour  Education  Act.  The  Welsh  county  councils  re¬ 
fused  to  work  the  Act  by  financing  the  Anglican  and 
Roman  Catholic  voluntary  schools.  But  in  reality  the 
revolt  was  a  gigantic  imposture.  It  existed  only  in  public 
speeches  and  in  the  columns  of  certain  newspapers,  all 
of  whom,  I  think  I  am  right  in  saying,  received  their  news 
from  the  same  correspondent,  who  was  Mr.  Lloyd  George’s 
factotum.  What  happened  was  that  the  Welsh  county 
councils  did  not  make  maintenance  grants  to  the  voluntary 

95 


The  Best  I  Remember 


96 

schools,  but  they  granted  them  loans  to  finance  the  schools. 
Anyway,  the  teachers  were  paid  and  the  schools  were  sus¬ 
tained.  In  one  county  the  revolt  was  genuine.  Merioneth¬ 
shire  had  Mr.  Haydn  Jones  (now  M.P.)  as  Chairman  of 
its  Education  Committee,  and  Mr.  Haydn  Jones  had  no 
patience  with  mere  finesse.  He  was  solidly  supported  by 
the  council.  In  the  autumn  of  1905  Mr.  Haydn  Jones  in¬ 
timated  that  rather  than  finance  the  voluntary  schools  from 
the  rates  he  would  close  all  the  elementary  (provided) 
schools  in  Merionethshire,  and  get  the  ministers  of  the 
Free  Churches  to  gather  the  children  in  the  chapels  for 
their  lessons.  Mr.  Lloyd  George  was  aghast,  and  a 
hurried  little  conference  was  held  at  Llandrindod  Wells, 
in  which  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  Rev.  Thomas  Law,  Rev. 
C.  Silvester  Horne,  Dr.  J.  D.  Jones  and  Mr.  Haydn  Jones 
conferred  on  how  this  crisis — with  its  inevitable  exposure  of 
the  much -advertised  revolt — was  to  be  met.  I  believe  that 
Mr.  Haydn  Jones  agreed  to  defer  action  until  the  New 
Year.  Early  in  December  Mr.  Balfour’s  Government 
resigned.  Sir  Henry  Campbell-Bannerman  assumed  office, 
Mr.  Lloyd  George  received  Cabinet  office,  and  the  Welsh 
revolt  ceased  to  interest  the  political  world. 

Mr.  Bullett,  the  American  journalist,  was  not  the  first 
newspaper  man  that  Mr.  Lloyd  George  has  thrown  to  the 
wolves  after  he  had  used  him  to  fly  a  kite.  The  same 
experience  befell  me  in  1905.  During  the  last  three  years 
of  the  Balfour  Government  I  often  had  to  see  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  at  the  House  of  Commons  on  educational  matters 
for  my  paper.  He  held  the  strings  of  many  subterranean 
movements  in  his  hands,  and,  since  he  never  answered 
letters  or  telegrams,  it  was  necessary  to  see  him  occa¬ 
sionally  to  keep  au  courant  with  matters  that  were  of  Free 
Church  interest.  When  I  was  trying  to  make  a  synthesis 
of  Free  Church  opinion  as  to  the  lines  on  which  an  educa¬ 
tion  settlement  ought  to  be  reached  if  a  Liberal  Government 
came  into  office,  I  had  a  long  interview  with  Mr.  Lloyd 


Mr.  Lloyd  George  97 

George  in  one  of  the  corridors  at  the  House  of  Commons. 
I  took  careful  notes  as  he  spoke,  and  at  least  once  sug¬ 
gested  that  he  was  skating  over  thin  ice,  and  might  upset 
Free  Church  stalwarts  by  what  he  was  saying.  He  replied 
that  Free  Churchmen  ought  to  understand  the  real  posi¬ 
tion.  The  crucial  point  of  the  interview  was  that  Free 
Churchmen  might  have  to  concede  to  the  Anglicans  the 
right  of  entry  into  the  schools  within  school  hours  in 
order  to  give  denominational  religious  instruction.  Free 
Churchmen  generally  were,  with  some  intransigent  excep¬ 
tions,  ready  to  concede  right  of  entry  to  the  denomina- 
tionalists  outside  school  hours — i.e.  before  the  registers 
were  marked — but  to  “inside  facilities”  almost  all  Free 
Churchmen  were  hostile.  Mr.  Lloyd  George  felt  then, 
however,  that  they  might  have  to  be  conceded.  I  left  him 
anticipating  that  the  interview  would  flutter  the  Noncon¬ 
formist  dovecotes.  However,  I  wrote  the  interview,  and 
took  care  that  a  proof  was  sent  to  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
at  his  home  at  Wandsworth  Common.  It  was  not 
returned.  The  interview  appeared  on  the  Thursday 
prior  to  the  National  Free  Church  Council’s  assembly  in 
March,  1905.  It  made  just  the  sensation  I  expected.  To 
deal  with  the  situation  it  created,  the  Free  Church  Council’s 
Education  Committee  was  summoned  to  an  emergency 
meeting  before  the  Council  opened  on  the  Monday  even¬ 
ing.  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  as  a  member  of  the  Committee, 
received  his  summons,  but,  instead  of  attending,  he  tele¬ 
graphed  to  the  Secretary  of  the  Free  Church  Council  that 
I  had  misinterpreted  him,  adding  (quite  superfluously) 
that  he  was  not  in  favour  of  inside  facilities  (though  I  had 
not  suggested  he  was).  Rev.  Thomas  Law  allowed  a 
colleague  to  wire  me  a  copy  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George’s  tele¬ 
gram,  and  I  w^ent  post  haste  to  the  House  of  Commons  to 
ask  for  an  explanation  of  the  repudiation.  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  sent  out  a  fellow  Welsh  member  to  ask  what  I 
wanted.  I  explained  the  circumstances,  stated  that  if  Mr 


The  Best  I  Remember 


98 

Lloyd  George  persisted  in  his  repudiation  of  my  record 
of  our  interview  I  should  publish  an  affidavit  retailing  all 
the  circumstances,  including  my  warning  at  the  time  of 
the  interview  that  he  was  skating  on  thin  ice,  and  the  fact 
that  by  not  returning  the  proof  he  had  tacitly  “passed” 
it.  I  added  that  if  Mr.  Lloyd  George  had  been  flying  a 
kite  that  had  come  to  earth  and  wanted  to  get  out  of  the 
difficulty  by  a  diplomatic  evasion,  I  would  give  it  to  him. 
The  M.P.  went  back  to  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  and  after  a 
few  minutes’  absence  returned  to  me  to  say  that  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  wanted  the  diplomatic  evasion.  I  gave  it  to  him 
in  the  next  issue  of  the  Christian  World.  But  I  never 
risked  another  interview  with  Mr.  Lloyd  George. 

Shortly  after  Mr.  Lloyd  George  succeeded  Mr.  Asquith 
in  the  Premiership  he  invited  a  large  number  of  leading 
Free  Church  ministers  to  a  breakfast  party  at  10  Downing 
Street.  It  was  a  diplomatic  stroke.  Nonconformists  did 
not  like  Mr.  Lloyd  George’s  association  with  Lord  North- 
cliffe.  Lord  Beaverbrook  and  Sir  Edward  Carson — the 
junta  that  threw  Mr.  Asquith  to  the  wolves.  Moreover, 
though  the  Free  Churches  had  gone  whole-heartedly  into 
the  war  as  an  idealistic  fight  for  small  nationalities  and  to 
end  war,  there  was  a  growing  feeling  after  thirty  months 
of  war  that  a  peace  less  perilous  to  the  stability  of  the  after¬ 
war  world  might  be  gained  by  conference  than  by  a  knock¬ 
out  blow.  All  the  early  idealism  had  faded  away,  and  the  war 
was  assuming  all  its  ugly  aspects  of  commercial  cupidity. 
The  gentlemen  who  “bled  their  country  while  their  country 
bled  for  them  ”  were  not  concealing  their  pride  that  they 
“were  doing  very  well  ”  out  of  the  war.  This  mood  made 
many  Free  Churchmen  uneasy,  especially  as  it  was  known 
that  the  Kaiser  had  twice  made  peace  overtures  which 
were  scornfully  rejected  without  being  explored.  The 
belief  grew  that  the  real  bone  of  contention  between  Mr. 
Asquith  and  Mr.  Lloyd  George  had  been  Mr.  Asquith’s 
readiness — as  France  itself  was  ready — to  explore  the 


99 


Mr.  Lloyd  George 

second  German  peace  overture,  while  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
stood  out  for  a  knock  out.” 

So,  soon  after  assuming  the  Premiership,  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  sought  to  placate  Free  Church  opinion.  Dr.  J.  H. 
Shakespeare  was  the  deus  ex  machina.  The  breakfast 
was  a  private  function,  and  not  altogether  a  happy  one. 
Necessarily  there  has  been  some  leakage  concerning  the 
proceedings.  Piecing  together  the  fragments,  I  gather 
that  Mr.  Lloyd  George  was  pious  and  ingratiating.  He 
solemnly  assured  the  ministers  that  he  stood  where  he 
had  always  stood — a  Free  Churchman,  a  Liberal,  a  lover 
of  peace,  and  a  believer  in  democracy.  He  hinted  that  one 
of  his  first  duties  on  becoming  Premier  was  to  rush  off  to 
Paris  to  prevent  France  from  making  a  separate  peace. 
The  Welsh  wizard  exercised  all  his  wizardry.  No  trick 
in  the  magician’s  box  was  left  unplayed.  There  was  a 
little  discussion,  not  altogether  pleasing  to  Mr.  Lloyd 
George.  A  few  awkward  questions  were  put.  One  Welsh 
minister,  eminent  in  the  Premier’s  own  denomination, 
probed  into  Mr.  Lloyd  George’s  motives  for  declining  to 
explore  German  peace  overtures,  and  was  assured  that  the 
war  map  was  not  in  a  ripe  condition  for  such  bargaining. 
One  of  the  most  highly  revered  of  all  Free  Church  leaders 
bluntly  asked  Mr.  Lloyd  George  if  he  was  not  leaving  God 
out  of  all  his  calculations,  but  the  Premier  easily  satisfied 
that  saintly  scholar — in  whom  there  is  no  guile.  He 
wanted  the  Kaiser,  he  said,  to  have  a  monopoly  of  that 
brand  of  religiosity.  As  the  company  was  breaking  up  a 
venerable  minister,  beloved  in  all  the  Free  Churches,  called 
a  halt,  and  suggested  that  a  few  moments  should  be  spent 
in  prayer.  Thereupon  he  prayed  that  Almighty  God 
might  keep  Mr.  Lloyd  George  faithful  to  all  the  principles 
and  ideals  to  which  he  had  that  morning  repledged  him¬ 
self.  It  was  an  affecting  scene,  and  I  would  give  much  to 
have  heard  Mr.  Lloyd  George’s  subsequent  report  of  it  to, 
say.  Sir  William  Sutherland. 


CHAPTER  XVI 


DR.  JOWETT 

7HEN  he  was  a  very  small  boy — I  once  heard  Dr. 

▼  ▼  Jowett  say — he  drew  cows  on  a  slate,  and  always  took 
each  drawing  to  his  mother  for  her  to  praise  it.  One  day  he 
made  a  daring  variation — he  drew  a  house.  Off  he  went 
with  it  to  his  mother  for  her  approval.  “There,”  she  said, 
“you  have  drawn  a  beautiful  cow.”  Dr.  Jowett  declares 
that  his  houses  are  all  cows — in  other  words,  if  he  makes  a 
speech  it  is  always  a  sermon  masquerading  as  a  speech. 
While  it  is  true  that  Dr.  Jowett  has  given  all  his  energies 
and  devoted  his  every  gift  of  mind  and  soul  to  preaching, 
it  is  clear  that  he  might  have  been  exceedingly  versatile. 
One  of  the  best  speeches  made  in  the  great  education  con¬ 
troversy  in  190 1-3  was  delivered  by  Dr.  Jowett  at  a  Free 
Church  Conference  at  the  Holborn  Restaurant.  And  I 
have  heard  him,  on  several  occasions,  make  an  after-dinner 
speech  rippling  with  quiet  humour  and  flashing  with  pretty 
wit.  When  he  was  minister  at  Carrs  Lane  Chapel  all 
the  Sunday  school  teachers  in  Birmingham  crowded  his 
weekly  preparation  class,  when  with  blackboard  and  chalk 
Dr.  Jowett  made  fine  use  of  the  pedagogic  skill  he  ac¬ 
quired  when  he  was  an  elementary  school  teacher  in 
Yorkshire.  I  was  present  at  Copenhagen  in  August,  1922, 
when  Dr.  Jowett,  by  a  timely  intervention  in  a  heated 
debate,  turned  the  tide  of  a  discussion  on  armaments  which 
threatened  to  lead  an  international  conference  of  Christian 
leaders  into  a  hopeless  impasse. 

At  Edinburgh  University  Dr.  Jowett  fell  under  the 
spell  of  Professor  Henry  Drummond,  and  he  caught  some- 

100 


Dr.  Jowett 


lOI 


thing  of  that  charm  which  Drummond  diffused  around 
him.  Incidentally  I  may  mention  that  Drummond  had  two 
peculiarities.  He  was  an  evangelist  who  wore  corsets  and, 
as  he  said  himself,  he  could  not  spell.  From  Drummond 
Dr.  Jowett  learned,  I  fancy,  his  supreme  tact  in  dealing 
with  boys  and  young  men.  There  is  a  story  of  Drummond 
being  urged  by  a  Scottish  mother  who  was  anxious  about 
her  undergraduate  son’s  moral  character  to  allow  the  young 
man  to  call  and  “be  talked  to.”  Drummond  consented, 
and  the  lad  came,  looking  sheepish  and  surly  and  evi¬ 
dently  resenting  the  whole  idea  of  the  interview.  Drum¬ 
mond  met  him  with  his  engaging  smile  and  with  the 
disarming  observation,  “  I  suppose  you  know  that  this  is 
all  a  put-up  job.”  The  ice  broke,  and  a  month  later  the 
undergraduate  was  acting  as  a  steward  at  Drummond’s 
theatre  services. 

A  parallel  story  of  Dr.  Jowett  is  that  when  he  was  at 
Newcastle  (where  I  first  met  him  in  1893)  Dr.  Jowett  started 
some  religious  meetings  for  boys  and  girls.  At  the  first 
service  four  “bad  lads”  who  had  hidden  away  in  a  back 
gallery  upset  the  proceedings  by  playing  an  obligato  on 
penny  whistles  while  Dr.  Jowett  was  speaking.  A  steward 
captured  them  and  brought  them  to  the  vestry  for  a  scold¬ 
ing  from  Dr.  Jowett.  They  stood  in  a  row  in  obvious 
trepidation ;  but  when  Dr.  Jowett  came  into  the  room  he 
met  them  with  the  question,  addressed  in  a  contemptuous 
tone  :  “Can’t  you  fellows  play  tin  whistles  any  better  than 
that  ?  If  you  can’t  I  shall  have  to  get  Mrs.  Jowett  to  give 
you  some  lessons.”  The  faces  of  the  boys  beamed  back. 
A  few  weeks  later — after  they  had  had  some  lessons  from 
Mrs.  Jowett — the  four  boys  trooped  on  to  the  platform  at 
the  children’s  service  and  played  a  quartette  on  tin  whistles, 
with  Mrs.  Jowett  accompanying  them  on  the  pianoforte. 

Dr.  Jowett  has  not  merely  concentrated  all  his  powers 
upon  preaching,  but  he  has  almost  concentrated  all  his 
preaching  upon  one  theme — “Grace.”  It  is  the  core  of 


102 


The  Best  I  Remember 


his  gospel ;  and  he  comes  back  to  that  theme  with  in¬ 
evitableness.  And  the  subject  of  grace  never  stales  in 
its  infinite  variety  under  Dr.  Jowett’s  treatment.  Within 
my  recollection  Dr.  Jowett’s  preaching  has  changed  in  a 
^  marked  way.  There  was  a  time,  when  he  was  at  Birm¬ 
ingham,  when  his  sermons  were  elaborately  illustrated, 
reminding  one  of  a  gorgeous  stained  glass  window.  Now 
the  illustrations  come  far  less  frequently  and  are  much  less 
ornate.  The  lily  work  at  the  top  of  the  pillars  is  less 
obtrusive,  and  Dr.  Jowett’s  preaching  style  is  more  robust 
and  emphatic.  His  sojourn  in  America  had  a  mellowing 
i  and  deepening  effect  on  his  sermons.  Happily  he  escaped 
iq  !  “oratory,”  for  which  Americans  have  still  an  insatiable 

I  have  never  been  able,  from  hearing  Dr.  Jowett  preach, 
to  feel  quite  certain  where  he  stands  in  relation  to  modern 
theological  issues.  His  ministry  is  essentially  evangelical 
in  spirit  but  not  evangelical  in  the  letter.  I  have  never 
^  heard  him  preach  on  a  miracle  when  he  has  emphasized 
'  the  miraculous;  invariably  he  has  drawn  from  the  miracle- 
story  its  spiritual  significances  and  present-day  applica¬ 
bility.  Nor  have  I  ever  heard  Dr.  Jowett  indicate  his 
personal  attitude  towards  higher  criticism,  beyond  con¬ 
ceding  once  that  there  were  two  Isaiahs.  His  preaching 
is  the  preaching  of  affirmations  to  the  total  exclusion  of 
negations.  While  he  never  wounds  the  susceptibilities  of 
the  Conservative  school,  he  never  challenges  the  Liberals 
in  theology.  “New”  and  “old”  alike  thus  find  common 
ground  in  a  scriptural  ministry  luminous  with  spiritual 
truth,  yet  free  from  the  jangling  of  the  school  men. 

A  large  part  of  Dr.  Jowett’s  fascination  lies  in  his 
exquisite  English.  He  promotes  the  use  of  words  to  a  fine 
art — in  the  sense  that  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  did,  but 
not  as  Walter  Pater  did.  He  is  never,  I  mean,  meticulous 
to  the  point  of  being  precious.  A  young  Japanese  student 
asked  me  once  where  he  would  hear  the  English  language 


Dr.  Jowett 


103 


spoken  at  its  best.  I  advised  him  to  hear  Dr.  Jowett 
preach  and  Mr.  Asquith  speak.  A  public  school  boy 
whom  I  knew  went  regularly  to  hear  Dr.  Jowett  preach, 
because  he  said  “it  helps  a  chap  in  preparing  for  the 
literature  papers  in  the  matric.  to  see  how  Dr.  Jowett  uses 
English  words.”  Words  are  Dr.  Jowett’s  hobby-study. 

He  delights  in  them.  He  told  me  once  that  Henry  Ward 
Beecher  used  to  carry  a  handful  of  precious  stones — dia- 
monds,  rubies,  amethysts — in  his  pocket  so  that  at  odd  r  /' 
moments  he  could  let  the  sunshine  play  upon  them  and  ' 
watch  the  varying  lights  flash  from  their  facets.  “  I  do 
it  too,”  added  Dr.  Jowett,  only  with  words.” 

Popularity  has  left  Dr.  Jowett  unspoilt.  He  bears 
himself  with  a  natural  austere  dignity — an  American 
minister  once  said  that  no  one  has  ever  dreamed  of  slapping 
Dr.  Jowett  on  the  back — but  he  readily  unbends  and  enjoys 
a  joke  like  the  hearty  Yorkshireman  that  he  really  is. 

All  the  flattery  poured  upon  him  runs  off  him  like  rain 
off  a  mackintosh.  The  American  Press  would  have  turned 
his  head,  had  it  been  possible,  by  its  chorus  of  adulation 
when  he  went  to  New  York;  but  he  brushed  it  aside  in 
perfect  disregard.  To  be  hailed  as  “the  greatest  preacher 
in  the  world”  offended  his  genuine  modesty;  while  the 
“pen  portraits,”  “impressions”  and  “appreciations”  that 
filled  the  New  York  newspapers  only  made  him  feel 
humble.  Once — and  the  occasion  was  one  when  any  man 
might  have  been  moved — I  saw  him  almost  overwhelmed 
by  a  demonstration  of  appreciation.  It  was  at  the  historic 
dinner  given  in  the  House  of  Commons  dining-room  by 
Sir  Albert  Spicer  and  Sir  Joseph  Compton  Rickett  to 
welcome  Dr.  Jowett  on  his  return  to  England  at  the  close 
of  his  New  York  ministry.  About  a  hundred  members  of 
Parliament,  of  all  parties,  joined  in  the  tribute,  and  Mr. 
Lloyd  George — ^who  had  pressed  Dr.  Jowett,  by  cablegram, 
to  return  to  London,  since  England  needed  all  her  prophets 
in  the  time  of  social  rebuilding  after  the  war — told  the 

H 


The  Best  I  Remember 


104 

company  that  he  had  got  into  trouble  with  the  American 
Government  for  helping  to  disturb  Dr.  Jowett  in  his  New 
York  ministry.  “Really,”  said  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  “I 
thought  that  the  Anglo-American  alliance  would  be  en¬ 
dangered,  so  hotly  was  my  action  over  Dr.  Jowett  re¬ 
sented.”  After  that  dinner  I  walked  to  Victoria  station 
from  the  House  of  Commons  with  Dr.  Jowett,  and  I  told 
him  that  he  might  well  be  forgiven  for  a  little  vanity  over 
such  a  unique  tribute.  “It  did  get  under  my  skin,  I 
confess,”  he  said.  “You  know  me  well  enough  to  know 
that  I  do  not  seek  personal  glory,  or  court  publicity.  I 
have  always  lived  my  own  life  quietly  and  simply,  just 
loving  my  home  and  my  work;  still,  to-night’s  function 
has  made  me  feel  that  work  such  as  I  have  tried  to  do  is 
not  done  in  vain.  I  take  it  all  as  a  tribute  to  the  Christian 
ministry.” 

When  I  was  in  America  in  1920  I  heard  that  a  mega¬ 
phone  man  on  one  of  the  rubber-neck  tourist  cars  in  New 
York  was  drawing  the  attention  of  his  sightseers  to  Fifth 
Avenue  Presbyterian  Church  in  the  following  terms : 
“On  your  left  is  Fifth  Avenue  Presbyterian  Church,  the 
wealthiest  church  in  New  York.  For  several  years  the 
pastor  of  this  church  was  Dr.  John  Henry  Jowett,  the 
greatest  preacher  in  the  English-speaking  world.  He 
ministered  here  until  1918,  when  he  was  recalled  to  London 
by  the  King  of  England.” 


CHAPTER  XVII 


DR.  ORCHARD  AND  OTHERS 

WHENEVER  I  think  of  Dr.  Orchard  I  recall  an 
episode  of  ten  years  ago.  The  scene  was  a  railway 
junction  in  the  English  Midlands.  A  branch  line  train  had 
arrived  at  the  junction  landing  a  hilarious  party  of  younger 
ministers  and  laymen  fresh  from  a  Free  Church  gathering 
at  Swanwick.  The  London  train  entered  the  junction,  and 
the  Swanwick  “Fellows  ”  clambered  into  the  compartments. 
As  the  train  was  about  to  move  off  half  a  dozen  heads 
appeared  at  each  of  the  windows  of  half  a  dozen  different 
compartments,  and  from  each  group  came  a  sharp  staccato 
yell,  every  word  emphasized  till  it  sounded  like  a  pistol- 
shot :  “We — want — Orchard.  We — want — Orchard.” 

And  then  from  another  carriage  (where  Dr.  Orchard  was) 
came  the  defiant  answer  :  “You — shan’t — have— Orchard.” 
The  scene  indexes  the  man  and  the  appeal  he  makes  to 
men.  For  Dr.  Orchard  is  one  of  those  vibrant  souls  whose 
personality  exudes  charm  and  fascination.  Where  he  is, 
there  there  is  laughter.  He  dispenses  good  humour  whole¬ 
sale.  His  own  laugh  is  an  infectious  thing.  Blindfold 
you  could  find  your  way  to  a  group  where  Orchard  is 
by  the  merriment  emanating  from  it.  He  is  at  his  best  in 
a  group. 

Whatever  may  be  the  end  of  Dr.  W.  E.  Orchard’s 
spiritual  pilgrimage — some  people,  mistakenly  I  believe, 
still  imagine  that  he  will  ultimately  find  his  way  to  Rome — 
his  vital  personality  will  never  be  subdued.  Even  in  the 
girdled  robe  of  a  Friar  in  a  Dominican  monastery  Dr. 
Orchard  would  be  Dr.  Orchard — a  stormy  petrel  and  the 

105 


io6  The  Best  I  Remember 

centre  of  any  revolt  that  might  be  afoot.  For  Dr.  Orchard 
is  a  born  rebel.  It  is  in  his  blood.  He  takes  a  puck-like 
delight  in  shocking  grandmothers  and  in  frightening 
merely  negatively  good  people.  He  emerged  from  the 
solid  respectabilities  of  English  Presbyterianism  to  flutter 
around  the  fringes  of  the  New  Theology  controversy — 
though  he  was  never  really  in  Rev.  R.  J.  Campbell’s 
theological  camp.  I  had  a  hand  in  his  appointment  to  the 
pastorate  of  the  King’s  Weigh  House  Chapel.  Only 
recently  I  came  across  a  letter  amid  a  debris  of  corre¬ 
spondence,  conveying  to  me  a  resolution  passed  by  the 
Church  Committee  in  September,  1914,  after  he  had 
accepted  its  invitation  to  be  its  minister,  thanking  me  for 
“the  great  assistance  ”  I  rendered  in  bringing  about  the 
“happy  settlement.”  But  the  odd  side  of  it  all  is  that  I 
suggested  Dr.  Orchard  to  the  officers  of  the  King’s  Weigh 
House  Church  on  the  double  ground  that  he  was  a  preacher 
of  so  distinctive  a  type  that  even  West  London  could  not 
ignore  him,  and  that  he  was  a  Liberal  theologian  who 
would  sustain  what  one  may  call  the  historical  heretical 
tradition  of  the  Weigh  House  Church.  But  Dr.  Orchard 
does  not  stand  still.  There  is  nothing  static  in  his  make¬ 
up.  His  fluidity  is  part  of  his  charm — he  cannot  wear 
stale. 

Dr.  Orchard  went  to  the  King’s  Weigh  House  belong¬ 
ing  to  the  Liberal  theological  school,  and  within  a  year  he 
was  championing  a  wholly  different  cause.  Theologically 
Dr.  Orchard  is  now  a  confessed  credalist.  He  boasts  that 
he  stands  alone — that  he  is  a  modern  Athanasius.  He  re¬ 
fuses  to  conform  to  current  Nonconformity.  His  sacrament- 
alism  would  cause  him  to  be  inhibited  from  any  Anglican 
rectorate  for  ecclesiastical  disorderliness.  Nowhere  in 
London  is  ecclesiastical  millinery  so  obtrusive  as  at  the 
King’s  Weigh  House  Church.  Dr.  Orchard — who  some¬ 
times  calls  himself  “Father  ’-’  Orchard — celebrates  the  Mass, 
reserves  the  sacraments,  prays  for  the  dead,  burns  candles 


Dr.  Orchard  and  Others  107 

on  the  altar,  and  keeps  up  to  date  with  the  very  latest 
priestly  cringes.  And  along  with  all  this  goes  the  most 
robust  and  valiant  preaching,  the  most  scathing  excoria¬ 
tion  of  modern  sins,  pretences,  and  follies,  and  the  most  un¬ 
flinching  sincerity  and  self-sacrifice.  As  Savonarola 
lashed  the  Florentines  Dr.  Orchard  whips  London 
pharisees  to-day ;  and  always  he  preaches  to  a  crowded 
church.  Half  his  congregation,  it  is  said,  go  to 
the  King’s  Weigh  House  for  the  ornate  ritualistic  ser¬ 
vice  and  can  hardly  endure  Dr.  Orchard’s  preaching;  the 
other  half  go  to  hear  Dr.  Orchard’s  sermons,  and  can 
scarcely  thole  the  ritualism.  A  Roman  Catholic  lady 
who  stayed  for  a  Communion  service  at  the  Weigh 
House  remarked  that  “it  was  very  impressive,  but  you 
know,  my  dear,  I  prefer  our  simple  Roman  Catholic 
Mass.” 

It  is  easier  to  disagree  with  Dr.  Orchard’s  vagaries  than 
to  disagree  with  Dr.  Orchard  himself.  He  radiates  a 
charm  distinctly  his  own.  His  spirit  is  wholly  delightful. 
So  is  his  wit.  He  shares  with  Dean  Inge  the  merit  of 
being  the  most  interesting  preacher  in  London,  and  for  the 
same  reason.  Both  are  uncensored.  Dr.  Orchard  because 
he  is  not  concerned  if  people  who  hear  him  preach  are 
annoyed  at  his  outspokenness,  and  Dean  Inge  because 
he  is  entrenched  in  a  Deanery  and  can  say  just  what 
he  likes. 

How  Dr.  Orchard  escaped  the  attentions  of  the  public 
prosecutor  during  the  war  passes  comprehension.  He  said 
things  no  editor  would  dare  to  have  printed,  or,  indeed, 
could  have  published  without  coming  under  the  ban  of  the 
Censor.  Dr.  Orchard’s  pacifism  went  unchallenged  and 
unrebuked.  He  denounced  all  war  in  general,  and  the 
great  war  in  particular.  A  stepson  of  Dr.  Orchard’s  was 
an  officer  in  the  Army,  and  he  found  his  stepfather’s 
pacifist  opinions  very  distasteful.  But  one  night  this 
officer  dined  with  a  highly  placed  military  personage 


io8  The  Best  I  Remember 

engaged  in  the  War  Office.  Over  the  dinner-table  con¬ 
versation  turned  on  the  war,  and  the  military  official  con¬ 
fessed  that  he  hated  war  though  it  was  his  trade.  More¬ 
over,  he  confessed  his  doubts  whether  war  ever  settled  any¬ 
thing.  “Sometimes,”  he  said,  “  I  get  so  fed  up  with  war  and 
War  Office  work  and  the  futility  of  all  this  slaughter  that 
I  can’t  bear  it  any  longer,  and  I  go  off,  in  sheer  despera¬ 
tion,  to  a  place  called  the  King’s  Weigh  House  Chapel, 
near  Grosvenor  Square,  where  a  preacher  named  Orchard 
raves  against  war  like  a  howling  dervish.  It  restores 
my  soul.”  He  had  not  the  slightest  notion  that  his  guest 
was  in  any  way  related  to  Dr.  Orchard. 

My  acquaintance  with  Rev.  Bernard  J.  Snell  dates 
from  a  meeting  in  the  grounds  of  the  fever  hospital  at 
Stockwell  in,  I  think,  1899.  He  was  just  convalescent  from 
typhoid  fever,  and  when  I  had  called  to  inquire  about  his 
progress  I  met  him  strolling  round  the  gardens.  The  next 
time  I  saw  him  was  in  his  pulpit  a  few  months  later,  when 
he  was  resuming  his  ministry  after  his  long  illness.  In  the 
interval  he  had  lost  his  wife  and  one  of  his  closest  friends. 
As  a  rule,  I  do  not  remember  texts ;  but  I  remember  that  on 
that  occasion  Mr.  Snell  preached  on  “The  day  will  come 
when  my  tongue  shall  yet  praise  Him.”  It  was  evident 
that  he  was  feeling  bruised  and  dazed  by  life’s  batterings, 
and  he  was  altogether  too  honest  to  say  at  that  moment 
that  he  could  feel  that  “all  things  work  together  for 
good.” 

Good  stories  cluster  round  Bernard  Snell — himself  an 
excellent  raconteur.  Once  he  went  back  to  New  College, 
Hampstead  (his  Alma  Mater)^  to  address  the  students.  He 
was  unconventional,  as  is  his  way,  and  audacious  too.  He 
told  the  students  leaving  college  that  whatever  else  they 
did  they  must  each  save  in  their  first  year  in  the 
ministry,  ^10  in  their  second  year,  until  (even  if  they  went 
unmarried)  they  had  a  nest-egg  of  ;^50.  That  meant  in- 


Dr.  Orchard  and  Others 


109 


dependence,  and  without  a  sense  of  independence  a 
preacher  could  not  be  true  to  himself.  “You  can’t,”  said 
Mr.  Snell,  “preach  what  you  feel  unless  you  are  in  a  posi¬ 
tion  to  say  :  ‘  You  be  damned  ’  to  an  objecting  deacon.” 
The  Principal  of  New  College  was  horror-struck,  and  Mr. 
Snell  has  not  since  been  invited  to  address  New  College 
students. 

Mr.  Bernard  Snell’s  brother,  Rev.  Herbert  Snell,  is 
also  a  Congregational  minister.  If  the  fates  decreed  that 
they  had  to  address  the  same  meeting,  the  one  who  spoke 
first  was  at  one  time  quite  likely  to  tell  this  story.  I  heard 
it  when  Herbert  Snell  played  it  off  on  his  brother  Bernard. 
Mr.  Herbert  Snell  was  travelling  alone  in  a  railway 
carriage  v/hen  a  drunken  man  got  in  and  sat  down  at  the 
other  end  of  the  compartment.  Then  it  occurred  to  the 
minister  that  he  ought  not  to  treat  the  poor  inebriate  with 
contempt,  so  he  spoke  to  him.  The  drunken  man,  in 
reply,  asked  him  if  he  was  a  minister. 

“Yes,  a  Congregational  minister,”  Mr.  Snell  answered. 

“Do  you  know  a  Congregational  minister  named  Snell 
— Bernard  Snell?  ”  asked  the  drunken  man. 

“I  ought  to  do;  I’m  his  brother'!  ”  replied  Mr.  Herbert 
Snell. 

“You  Bernard  Snell’s  brother,”  said  the  inebriate, 
rising  unsteadily  and  offering  his  hand.  “Then  I’m  glad 
to  meet  you.  I  want  to  shake  hands  with  Bernard  Snell’s 
brother.  I  think  the  world  of  Bernard  Snell.  Why,  do 
you  know,”  he  added  in  a  confidential,  beery  whisper, 
“Bernard  Snell  converted  me.” 

Thirty  years  ago  New  College,  Hampstead,  had  a 
venerable  secretary.  Rev.  William  Farrer,  who  had  a 
weakness  for  phrasing  the  most  matter-of-fact  resolutions 
in  the  grand  Victorian  style.  If  it  were  just  a  vote  of 
thanks,  Mr.  Farrer  made  it  bristle  with  polysyllabic  words. 
A  resolution  adopting  a  report  glittered  with  rhetorical 


no 


The  Best  I  Remember 


adornments.  Mr.  Farrer  was  deaf,  and  used  a  very  large 
ear-trumpet.  He  stood  close  to  the  platform,  immediately 
in  front  of  the  speaker,  and,  with  his  ear-trumpet  in  action, 
listened  to  his  resolutions  being  read  with  all  the  pride  of 
a  young  author.  Once  it  fell  to  the  lot  of  a  minister 
whose  wit  exceeded  his  charity  to  propose  one  of  Mr. 
Farrer ’s  verbose  resolutions.  He  read  it  with  exaggerated 
emphasis,  stressing  all  the  rhetorical  phrases  and  accentuat¬ 
ing  all  the  resounding  words.  The  audience  first  smiled, 
then  quietly  chuckled,  and  at  last  laughed  outright. 

“But,  excuse  me,  ladies  and  gentlemen,”  said  the 
ministerial  satirist,  “I  am  reading  this  resolution  exactly 
in  the  form  it  has  been  handed  to  me — except  for  the 
mistakes  in  spelling.” 

Mr.  Farrer,  who  was  standing  as  usual  with  his  trumpet 
to  his  ear,  gasped,  paled,  and  dropped  into  a  chair  as  if 
he  had  been  shot.  His  glorious  hour  had  turned  to 
tragedy.  I  think  he  either  died  or  resigned  his  secretary¬ 
ship  of  New  College  soon  afterwards.  Anyway,  I  never 
saw  the  queer  old  gentleman  with  his  big  ear-trumpet 
again. 

Canon  Christopher  of  Oxford  was  a  very  notable 
figure  at  May  meetings  when  they  flourished  in  the  old 
Exeter  Hall  days.  He  too  always  stood  in  the  front  row 
with  a  big  trumpet  fixed  to  his  ear.  However  dull  the 
speeches  might  be — and  they  often  were  terribly  dull — he 
strained  to  hear  every  word.  I  never  saw  him  without 
recalling  Palmerston’s  remark  about  the  Member  of  Parlia¬ 
ment  who  used  to  sit  through  debates  in  the  House  of 
Commons  listening  eagerly  through  his  trumpet. 

“Did  you  ever,”  said  Palmerston  one  day,  “see  a  man 
throw  away  his  natural  advantages  so  prodigally  ?  ” 

Lord  Leverhulme  makes  no  secret  of  it  that  his  deaf¬ 
ness  is  not  devoid  of  advantages — he  cannot  hear  criticisms 


Dr.  Orchard  and  Others 


III 


of  himself.  When  I  was  a  small  boy  I  often  stood  at  the 
door  of  a  little  factory  on  the  banks  of  the  Mersey  watching 
soap  being  boiled.  A  short,  thick-set  man  in  his  shirt¬ 
sleeves  directed  the  operations.  It  was  William  Lever, 
now  Lord  Leverhulme,  the  directing  spirit  of  world-wide 
business  operations  with  a  capital  of  about  forty  millions. 
Mr.  Lever,  so  the  story  went  in  Warrington,  began  his 
Sunlight  Soap  business  with  a  capital  of  ;6'500  lent  to  him 
by  his  wife.  Thence  he  moved  to  Port  Sunlight,  where  he 
created  a  town,  planned  on  garden  city  lines,  for  his  opera¬ 
tives.  There  is  a  Congregational  Church  at  Port  Sun¬ 
light,  and  Lord  Leverhulme  takes  a  delight  in  getting 
leading  preachers  to  occupy  its  pulpit.  Once  when  he  was 
entertaining  a  very  famous  preacher,  Sir  William  (as  he 
was  then)  eagerly  accepted  an  invitation  to  read  the  Scrip¬ 
ture  lesson  at  the  next  morning’s  service.  But  before 
going  to  bed  he  asked  the  preacher  to  tell  him  what  the 
lesson  would  be,  and  he  added  :  “I  hope  you  won’t  select 
a  passage  with  things  like,  ^  He  that  hath  ears  to  hear,  let 
him  hear,*  in  it.” 

On  my  first  visit  to  Switzerland  in,  I  think  it  was, 
1895,  I  travelled  with  a  Lunn  party,  and  made  Grindel- 
wald  a  centre  for  excursions.  One  day,  after  crossing  the 
low’er  mer  de  glace,  three  of  us  went  into  an  ice  tunnel  cut 
into  the  terminal  of  the  glacier.  At  the  far  end  we  found 
a  minister — we  guessed  he  was  a  Wesleyan  Methodist — 
who  was  evidently  deeply  impressed  by  the  cave.  As  we 
were  turning  to  leave  he  startled  us  by  saying,  “Don’t 
you  think  we  ought  to  sing  *  Praise  God  from  whom  all 
blessings  flow  ’  ?  ”  and  he  promptly  started  to  sing.  We 
might  have  been  disposed  to  sing  the  Doxology  on  the 
mer  de  glace,  whose  natural  grandeur  did  set  up  a  sense 
of  reverential  awe,  but  the  man-made  ice  tunnel  did  not 
stir  our  devotional  feelings.  So  we  let  the  minister  sing 
it  as  a  solo.  Afterwards  we  discovered  his  identity.  It 


II2 


The  Best  I  Remember 


was  the  Rev.  Dinsdale  T.  Young,  now  minister  of  the  new 
Central  Wesleyan  Methodist  Hall  at  Westminster,  and 
one  of  the  most  popular  preachers  in  London,  judging  by 
the  unfailing  crowds  that  he  attracts.  It  has  been  one  of 
“fate’s  discourtesies”  that  I  have  never  met  Mr.  Dinsdale 
Young  since  that  rather  ludicrous  encounter  at  Grindel- 
wald,  but  I  have  heard  him  speak  on  many  occasions.  He 
grows  more  and  more  like  Dr.  Parker  in  appearance,  and 
speaks  in  tones  and  phrases  that  recall  the  famous  minister 
of  the  City  Temple.  Mr.  Dinsdale  T.  Young  prides  him¬ 
self  that  he  is  just  an  old-fashioned  Methodist  preacher, 
whose  function,  under  Heaven,  it  is  to  stand  four-square 
against  deviations  from  the  orthodox  faith  once  for  all 
delivered  unto  the  saints.  I  know,  however,  that  his 
ministry  sends  a  stream  of  hope  and  cheer  through  many 
world-worn  men  and  women. 

A  ministerial  friend  of  mine,  now  dead  (I  will  call  him 
the  Rev.  John  George),  used  to  tell  with  gusto  an  unkind 
story  against  himself.  He  was  a  perfectly  delightful 
man,  but  no  one  in  his  wildest  moments  would  have  said 
that  he  was  exactly  a  type  of  British  beauty.  The  fact 
that  he  was  no  Adonis  had  been  rubbed  into  him  at  board¬ 
ing  school  and  again  at  college.  When  he  had  been  a 
year  or  two  in  the  ministry  he  found  hTmself  in  Liverpool, 
and  went  out  to  find  an  old  theological  college  chum  who 
had  recently  settled  in  a  Liverpool  suburb,  and  had  just 
married.  This  friend  had  often  talked  to  his  young  wife 
about  the  Rev.  John  George,  describing  him  as  “at  once 
the  dearest  and  the  ugliest  man  in  the  world.”  The  manse 
door  was  opened  by  the  young  wife,  and  the  visitor  asked 
if  he  could  see  his  friend. 

“I’m  sorry,  Mr.  George,  but  my  husband  is  down  with 
influenza  and  must  not  see  anyone.  He  will  be  sorry  when 
he  hears  you  have  called  and  could  not  see  him.” 

“Oh,  I’m  exceedingly  sorry,”  said  Mr.  George,  and 


Dr.  Orchard  and  Others  113 

then  he  added  :  “But,  excuse  me,  Mrs. - ,  how  did  you 

know  that  I  am  Mr.  George?  ” 

The  young  wife  fled. 

If  volubility  is  oratory  and  verbosity  is  preaching,  I 
imagine  that  Dr.  De  Witt  Talmage  must  rank  as  a  great 
oratorical  preacher.  I  only  heard  him  once,  which  makes 
me  feel  I  have  much  to  be  thankful  for.  It  was  just  after 
a  silly  woman  had  thrown  a  ginger-nut  at  Mr.  Gladstone 
and  cut  the  Grand  Old  Man’s  eye.  Talmage  was  furious 
at  the  outrage,  and  in  his  sermon  declared  that  before  the 
sun  went  down  that  day  America’s  thundering  denun¬ 
ciation  of  the  vile  deed  would  reverberate  across  the 
Atlantic.  I  watched  the  cables  for  the  thunder,  but  the 
reverberations  did  not  come.  A  fortnight  later  the  New 
York  Herald  came  to  hand  with  a  single-line  note  on  the 
incident — “as  usual,  Gladstone  takes  the  cake.” 


CHAPTER  XVIII 


A  POLYGLOT  AND  SOME  EDITORS 

LIVERPOOL  lady  who  sat  next  to  Dr.  John  Watson 


at  dinner  one  night  apologized  for  her  husband’s 
absence  on  the  ground  that  he  was  suffering  from  a 
“polyglot  in  his  nose.”  Dr.  Watson  smilingly  observed 
that  he  had  often  wished  that  he  had  a  polyglot  in  his 


throat. 


“Oh,  if  you  knew,”  replied  the  lady,  “how  painful  a 
polyglot  in  the  nose  is,  you  would  not  want  to  have  a 
polyglot  in  your  throat.  I’m  sure.” 

I  do  not  know  how  many  languages  a  man  needs  to 
speak  to  earn  the  title  to  be  a  polyglot,  but  I  imagine  that 
Dr.  A.  E.  Garvie,  Principal  of  New  College,  is  one.  Mr. 
John  Morley  met  Dr.  Garvie  in  Montrose  years  ago, 
and  records  in  his  “Memories”  the  astonishment  he  ex¬ 
perienced  at  finding  in  that  remote  corner  a  young  Con¬ 
gregational  minister  familiar  with  half  a  dozen  European 
languages  and  their  literatures.  Since  then  Dr.  Garvie 
has  expanded  his  linguistic  achievements.  Rumour  credits 
him  with  acquiring  a  new  language  during  each  summer 
vacation.  I  met  him  in  New  York  picking  up  American 
very  rapidly  in  1920.  Dr.  Garvie  is  a  Scot,  and  his  speech 
betrayeth  him ;  but  he  is  believed  to  believe  that  his  accent 
is  unnoticeable.  He  is  like  the  Fife  man  who,  told  in 
London  that  “they  could  not  understand  his  accent,”  pro¬ 
tested  that  “he’d  never  heerd  tell  before  that  Fife  folk  had 
ony  awccent.” 

Dr.  Garvie  is  also  my  outstanding  example  of  a  really 
prodigious  worker.  His  only  recreation  is  other  work; 


114 


A  Polyglot  and  some  Editors  115 

but  his  reputation  as  a  raconteur  stands  high.  Better  than 
any  story  he  tells  is  one  told  of  him.  On  a  journey  to 
Newcastle  Dr.  Garvie  looked  out  of  the  railway  carriage 
window  and  got  a  scrap  of  cinder,  blown  from  the  engine, 
in  his  eye.  At  York,  with  his  eye  twitching  with  pain, 
he  ran  to  the  refreshment  buffet  and  ordered  a  glass  of 
milk.  When  he  had  gulped  it  down  he  thought  the 
flavour  unfamiliar  and  asked  the  waitress  in  a  dubious  tone, 
“Was  that  milk?  ”  “No,  sir,  rum  and  milk.”  “Oh,  but 
I  asked  for  milk!  ”  “Yes,  I  know,”  replied  the  waitress, 
“but  you  tipped  me  the  wink  so  I  made  it  rum  and 
milk.’" 

It  is  an  interesting  coincidence  that  the  present  editors 
of  the  Times  and  of  Punch  are  both  men  of  Free  Church 
ancestry.  Mr.  Wickham  Steed’s  father  was  a  county 
lawyer  in  Suffolk  and  a  pillar  of  East  Anglian  Congrega¬ 
tionalism.  Mr.  Steed  knows  Europe  and  European  politics 
as  few  men  do.  He  lived  in  the  very  midst  of  high  politics 
when  he  represented  the  Times  in  Vienna,  and  he  had  at 
his  elbow  Madame  Roze  who  knew  everybody  that  Mr. 
Steed  did  not  know.  Between  them  they  could  get  at 
everybody  who  mattered.  Mr.  Steed  is  an  extraordinarily 
voluble  and  an  amazingly  interesting  talker.  I  once 
lunched  with  him  before  he  went  to  Printing  House 
Square.  We  were  a  party  of  five,  apart  from  Mr.  Steed. 
Scarcely  anyone  spoke.  Conversation  with  Mr.  Steed  is 
a  monologue  by  Mr.  Steed;  but  as  Barrie  said  of  Blackie, 
he  does  not  mind  that.  Nor  did  we  ! 

Sir  Owen  Seaman,  the  editor  of  Punch,  was  not  only 
the  son  of  a  Nonconformist  deacon  but  he  went  to  Mill 
Hill  a  Nonconformist  school.  Since  then  his  interest  in 
Nonconformity  has  waned  into  non-existence,  I  should 
conjecture.  This,  I  am  afraid,  is  not  unusual  with  old 
Millhillians.  Sir  Owen  Seaman’s  father  was  a  deacon, 
and  I  think  secretary,  for  a  time,  of  Westminster  Congrega- 


ii6  The  Best  I  Remember 

tional  Chapel.  Rev.  Samuel  Martin,  the  preacher  under 
whom  Sir  Owen  Seaman  sat  as  a  small  boy,  was  succeeded 
by  Rev.  Henry  Simon,  uncle  of  Sir  John  Simon,  K.C. 
When  Sir  Owen  Seaman  was  at  Mill  Hill  school  the  late 
Sir  James  Murray  was  just  beginning  work  on  his  great 
dictionary,  now  nearing  completion.  Dr.  Murray,  as  he 
was  then,  had  a  little  tin  shed  at  the  school  as  his  lexico¬ 
graphical  study,  and  it  was  known  to  all  Millhillians  as 
the  Scriptorum.  Mr.  Robert  Harley,  who  shared  with  Dr. 
Todhunter  the  honour  of  being  the  greatest  mathematicians 
produced  by  the  Free  Churches,  was  a  master  at  Mill  Hill 
about  the  same  time.  In  recognition  of  his  services  to 
mathematical  science  Mr.  Harley  was  elected  a  member  of 
the  Athenaeum  Club.  I  remember  hearing  him  tell  over 
a  dinner-table  a  story  of  the  frigid  atmosphere  at  the  club. 
A  new  member  had  the  audacity  one  day  to  make  a  remark 
to  an  old  member  to  whom  he  had  not  been  introduced. 
He  said  “it  was  a  fine  day,”  or  something  equally  in¬ 
nocuous.  The  old  member  gasped  at  such  an  impertin¬ 
ence;  but  he  preserved  his  presence  of  mind  and  managed 
to  reach  a  bell.  A  club  servant  appeared.  “This  gentle¬ 
man,”  said  the  old  member — pointing  to  the  new  member 
— “wants  to  say  something  to  somebody.  Will  you  please 
attend  to  him  ?  ” 

Bishop  Welldon  remarked  once  that  the  big  money 
prizes  associated  with  modern  boxing  matches  degraded 
the  sport,  though  he  confessed  to  having  a  sneaking  sort 
of  regard  for  old  Tom  Sayers.  This  reminded  me  of  a 
story  of  Dr.  Alfred  Rowland,  who  was  Congregational 
minister  at  Crouch  End  for  forty  years.  Dr.  Rowland, 
who  has  always  struck  me  as  a  fine  example  of  a  sane 
saint,  used  to  take  his  boys  for  a  walk  round  Hampstead 
Heath,  returning  to  Crouch  End  by  way  of  Highgate 
cemetery,  to  show  them  where  Tom  Sayers  and  James 
Lillywhite  are  buried.  Henry  Ward  Beecher  was  a 


A  Polyglot  and  some  Editors  117 

devoted  reader  of  descriptions  of  prize  fights.  He  carried 
them  in  his  pockets  and  read  them  at  odd  moments. 

Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle  took  up  a  lance  on  behalf  of 
the  Congo  natives  who  were  being  ground  under  the  heel 
of  King  Leopold  of  Belgium,  and  just  before  his  vigorous 
booklet  appeared  I  spent  a  day  with  him  at  Crowborough 
to  gather  material  for  an  interview  on  the  Congo  atrocities 
and  the  part  played  by  the  missionaries  in  the  expose. 
The  creator  of  Sherlock  Holmes  had,  like  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson,  rather  despised  missionaries  until  he  came  up 
against  concrete  instances  of  their  value  as  sentinels  of 
humanitarianism.  Then  he  changed  his  view  entirely,  and 
told  me  that  he  would  never  again  speak  anything  but 
good  of  foreign  missionaries.  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle 
had,  in  his  dining-room  at  Crowborough,  a  large  cage  of 
Javanese  birds,  one  of  which  started  singing  as  he  and  I 
talked  about  the  Congo  revelations.  Sir  Arthur  jumped 
up  and  called  me  to  the  cage.  ‘H  want  to  experiment  with 
you.  I  do  this  with  all  my  visitors.  You  see  that  bird 
which  is  singing — watch  it  and  listen  to  it.  When  you 
cannot  hear  its  voice  any  longer  put  your  finger  down  on 
the  table,  but  notice  that  the  bird’s  throat  goes  on  throb¬ 
bing.”  I  listened,  and  the  bird’s  song  rose  higher  and 
higher  in  the  scale  till  the  moment  came  when  my  ear 
could  catch  no  sound  coming  from  its  throat.  But  the 
bird  was  still  singing,  and  it  was  a  full  twenty  seconds 
later  before  Sir  Arthur  laid  his  finger  on  the  table  to 
indicate  that  he  too  could  no  longer  hear  its  voice.  And 
yet  the  bird  sang  on.  I  was  mystified;  but  Sir  Arthur, 
who  had  been  studying  the  matter,  drew  the  conclusion 
that  all  nature  must  be  full  of  tremendous  noises,  above 
and  below  the  range  of  gamut  of  the  human  ear.  This 
Javanese  bird  had  carried  its  song  to  a  higher  key  than 
our  ears  could  follow;  but  Sir  Arthur’s  ear  had  been 
educated  by  the  bird  to  a  far  higher  sensitiveness  than 
mine. 


ii8 


The  Best  I  Remember 


Soon  after  the  death  of  Booker  Washington  I  heard 
the  late  Dr.  Walter  Hines  Page,  then  American  Am¬ 
bassador  in  London,  deliver  an  address  on  the  negro  leader 
which  stands  out  in  my  memory  as  one  of  the  finest  utter¬ 
ances  I  have  ever  listened  to.  Dr.  Page  was  a  journalist 
by  profession,  and  if  he  was  not  an  orator  in  the  commonly 
accepted  interpretation  of  that  word,  he  had  an  almost 
uncanny  genius  for  diagnosing  another  man’s  soul.  In 
speaking  of  Booker  Washington  he  threw  aside  ambassa¬ 
dorial  reserve  and  submerged  his  American  colour  pre¬ 
judice.  I  certainly  never  heard  a  white  man  assess  a  black 
man’s  worth  with  such  a  total  freedom  from  condescension 
and  with  such  whole-hearted  enthusiasm.  Dr.  Page 
edited  the  World's  Work  for  some  years,  and  he  was  a 
great  encourager  of  literary  aspirants.  Of  course,  he  had 
to  reject  many  contributions,  but  (like  the  present  editor 
of  Punch)  he  never  sent  back  a  manuscript  in  which  he 
discerned  any  signs  of  potential  literary  capacity  without 
a  kindly  and  stimulating  note.  Once  he  returned  a  worth¬ 
less  story  submitted  by  a  lady,  and  received  a  sharp  com¬ 
plaint  from  the  aspiring  authoress.  She  wrote  : 

Sir, — You  sent  hack  last  week  a  story  of  mine.  I  know 
you  did  not  read  the  story,  for  as  a  test  I  pasted  together  pages 
i8,  19  and  20,  and  the  manuscript  came  back  with  these  pages 
still  pasted.  So  I  know  that  you  are  a  fraud  and  turn  down 
stories  without  reading  them. 

Though  the  politest  of  men,  Dr.  Page  rejoined  with  a 
crushing  answer.  He  wrote  : 

Madam, — At  breakfast,  when  I  open  an  egg,  I  don’t  have 
to  eat  the  whole  egg  to  discover  it  bad. 


CHAPTER  XIX 


DR.  R.  J.  CAMPBELL 

The  tempestuous  New  Theology  controversy  that  rose 
and  swirled  around  the  magic  personality  of  the  Rev. 
R.  J.  Campbell  in  1907  was  said  at  the  time  to  have  made 
the  man  in  the  street  interested  for  the  first  time  in  theology. 
One  would  never  have  expected  that  so  winsome  a  person¬ 
ality  as  R.  J.  Campbell  would  have  been  the  centre  of 
such  a  cyclone.  A  year  or  two  before  the  controversy 
broke  out  Mr.  Campbell  had  been  a  Free  Church  idol. 
He  was  the  dominant  figure  of  English  Christianity. 
Everything  conspired  to  make  him  an  object  of  admiration 
— his  magnetic  eyes,  his  soft  white  hair,  his  silvery  voice, 
his  persuasive  eloquence,  his  palpable  sincerity,  his 
spiritual  genius,  his  ingrained  goodness  and  his  indomit¬ 
able  courage.  Women  worshipped  him,  men  fought  their 
way  into  the  City  Temple  to  hear  him.  His  fame  spread 
all  over  the  world.  If  this  idolatry  unbalanced  him,  it 
would  have  unbalanced  any  man,  for  dazzling  prosperity 
spoils  more  men  than  adversity  breaks.  Mr.  Campbell’s 
natural  sensitiveness  became  almost  morbid.  The  slightest 
criticism  cut  him  to  the  quick.  He  was  almost  too  thin- 
skinned  for  public  life. 

A  World  character  sketch  writer  once  said  of  Mr. 
Campbell  that  the  Reginald  in  him  was  always  in  raging 
conflict  with  the  John,  and  that  the  spirit  of  “the  House” 
(Christ  Church,  Oxford)  was  eternally  battling  with  his 
Methodist  upbringing.  The  writer  was  truer  in  his  diag¬ 
nosis  than  possibly  he  imagined.  Mr.  Campbell’s  genuine 
human  sympathies  drove  him  into  the  Labour  Party,  but 
I  119 


120 


The  Best  I  Remember 


the  working  man’s  bad  language  and  habits  offended  his 
fastidious  instincts.  So  his  Socialism  oozed  away.  Pos¬ 
sibly,  too,  Mr.  Campbell  ostentatiously  trailed  his  coat 
and  went  hunting  for  trouble.  Though  he  was  a  passive 
resister  he  publicly  dissociated  himself  from  Dr.  Clifford 
for  a  criticism  of  the  bishops  who  had  demanded  the  Act 
which  provoked  the  resistance.  He  visited  Mr.  Chamber- 
lain,  whom  Free  Churchmen  distrusted  and  disliked,  and 
he  let  it  be  known  that  he  did  not  believe  that  Free  Trade 
necessarily  opened  the  gates  to  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 
He  had  an  audience  of  the  Pope,  though  he  boasted  his 
Ulster  ancestry  and  looked  askance  at  Irish  Home  Rule. 
This  habit  of  running  with  the  hare  and  hunting  with  the 
hounds  weakened  Mr.  Campbell’s  hold  on  Nonconformity, 
and  paved  the  way  for  his  swift  descent  from  favour  when 
the  New  Theology  furore  began. 

Somehow  Nonconformity  accepted  Mr.  Campbell  as 
an  Evangelical  from  the  beginning  of  his  ministry;  but 
an  Evangelical,  in  the  ordinary  interpretation  of  the  word, 
he  never  really  was.  At  the  request  of  Sir  William 
Robertson  Nicoll  a  colleague  and  I  searched  through  Mr. 
Campbell’s  published  sermons  at  the  time  of  the  con¬ 
troversy  to  see  if  we  could  find  a  single  authentic  utterance 
that  brought  him  definitely  within  the  radius  of  evangelical 
orthodoxy.  But  the  search  was  made  in  vain.  For  two 
years  before  the  furore  Mr.  Campbell  had  been  preaching 
a  theology  with  an  underlying  monistic  philosophy. 
“Jesus  was  divine;  but  so  are  you,”  he  told  his  congre¬ 
gation  at  the  City  Temple  long  before  sermon  tasters 
scented  heresy  in  his  teaching.  He  was  cutting  sharply 
across  Pauline  theology  long  before  he  defiantly  declared 
that  “Paul’s  opinion  is  just  Paul’s  opinion,  and  not 
binding  on  you  and  me.” 

The  storm  burst  in  a  teacup — in  a  private  gathering  of 
the  London  Board  of  Congregational  Ministers.  Mr. 
Campbell  read  a  paper  before  this  body  outlining  his 


I2I 


Dr.  R,  J,  Campbell 

advanced  theological  views.  The  exposition  was  some¬ 
thing  of  a  bombshell,  and  a  sharp  bitter  discussion  fol¬ 
lowed,  in  the  course  of  which  one  impolite  minister  dubbed 
Mr.  Campbell  and  his  theology  as  “the  spawn  of  hell.” 
Within  an  hour  or  two  of  the  board  meeting  I  met  a  group 
of  ministers  who  had  been  present,  and  who  with  great 
eagerness  described  the  scene  and  outlined  Mr.  Campbell’s 
paper.  The  next  day  the  whole  proceedings  were  common 
knowledge  in  Congregational  circles.  There  was  every 
probability  that  the  episode  would  be  reported  in  the  daily 
press.  On  behalf  of  the  Christian  World  I  wrote  Mr. 
Campbell,  acquainting  him  with  this  leakage  from  the 
supposedly  secret  gathering.  I  told  him  I  had  material 
enough  to  write  a  brief  report  for  the  Christian  World, 
but  that  a  precis  prepared  by  himself  would  represent  him 
more  faithfully.  At  the  same  time  I  told  him  that  if  he 
felt  bound  to  silence  I  would  accept  his  decision  and 
publish  nothing.  Mr.  Campbell  did  not  feel  so  bound. 
He  sent  me  a  precis  of  his  theological  paper,  and  it  was 
published  in  the  Christian  World  just  as  he  supplied  it. 
In  Free  Church  circles  its  publication  caused  some  amaze¬ 
ment,  but  even  then  there  might  have  been  no  fierce 
controversy.  What  set  the  heather  ablaze  was  the  inter¬ 
view  which  Mr.  Campbell  gave  to  Mr.  F.  A.  Mackenzie 
of  the  Daily  Mail,  in  which  in  plain  language,  free  from 
all  theological  technicalities,  he  threw  over  the  Doctrine  of 
the  Fall,  the  Pauline  Plan  of  Salvation,  and  a  round  half- 
dozen  doctrines  that  had  been  the  very  citadels  of  the 
Evangelical  faith.  Then  the  storm-clouds  burst. 

The  New  Theology  controversy  was  a  Donny brook 
Fair,  with  hard  words  and  savage  recriminations  for  black¬ 
thorns  and  broken  heads.  Mr.  Campbell  stood  alone  save 
for  a  handful  of  ministers.  Some  of  them  ratted  with  all 
expedition  as  soon  as  the  deluge  came  upon  them.  Mr. 
Campbell  fought  with  his  back  to  the  wall,  retorted  bitterly 
upon  his  assailants,  rushed  off  to  Cornwall  to  write,  in  a 


122 


The  Best  I  Remember 

month,  an  apologia  pro  vita  sua  which  he  lived  to  recant. 
He  challenged  his  foes  to  do  their  worst.  Pulpits  and  plat¬ 
forms  rang  with  denunciations  of  Mr.  Campbell’s  theological 
wild  oats.  Dr.  Fairbairn  called  his  book  a  “farrago  of  non¬ 
sense.”  Dr.  Forsyth,  who  had  had  his  differences  with 
Mr.  Campbell  earlier,  said  Mr.  Campbell’s  views  were  like 
a  bad  photograph — “under-developed  and  over-exposed.” 
Phrases  from  the  book  snatched  from  their  context  were 
pilloried  as  impious.  The  ex-Chairman  of  the  Congre¬ 
gational  Union,  with  the  Principals  of  the  Congregational 
Colleges,  met  over  a  dinner  at  Lancaster  Gate  and  drew  up 
a  declaration  of  the  faith  as  once  delivered  to  the  saints 
to  counter  Mr.  Campbell’s  heresy,  and  it  was  published 
with  a  blare  of  trumpets,  only  to  sink  almost  immediately 
into  oblivion.  Isolated,  boycotted  and  ostracized,  Mr. 
Campbell  sulked  in  his  tent  at  Enfield.  He  started  a 
league  of  fellow-thinkers  to  sustain  him  in  the  fierce  fray, 
but  the  strong  men  who  first  rallied  to  his  standard — like 
Rev.  T.  Rhondda  Williams  and  Rev.  Arthur  Pringle — 
soon  discovered  that  Mr.  Campbell  wanted  followers  con¬ 
tent  to  be  echoes  of  himself,  not  colleagues  and  fellow  ex¬ 
plorers  in  theological  thought.  He  brooked  no  difference 
from  his  own  views,  and  he  resented  all  criticisms  as  hostile 
assaults.  Less  prominent  ministers  who,  risking  all,  joined 
his  bodyguard,  found  themselves  stranded  high  and  dry 
when  Mr.  Campbell  suddenly  came  to  terms  with  his  adver¬ 
saries.  Before  the  Congregational  Union  Dr.  Forsyth  and 
Mr.  Campbell  fell  upon  each  other’s  necks  in  histrionic 
fashion  (they  had  met  previously  and  rehearsed  the  affect¬ 
ing  reconciliation  over  a  dinner  table  a  week  previously), 
and  Mr.  Campbell  crept  back  into  the  camp  from  which  he 
had  been  driven.  The  futility  of  it  all  was  pathetic;  the 
pain  it  all  occasioned  tragic.  The  set-back  it  gave  to 
theological  freedom  was  deplorable.  Orthodoxy  reigned 
again  until  the  war  came,  shaking  all  the  theologies  and 
discovering  in  the  pews  of  all  the  churches  men  and  women 


123 


Dr.  R.  J.  Campbell 

baffled  and  bewildered  and  fearful  lest  the  very  funda¬ 
mentals  of  faith  would  be  destroyed  in  the  awful  debacle. 

Mr.  Campbell  next  disturbed  the  placid  waters  by 
renouncing-  Nonconformity  and  seeking  ordination  in  the 
Church  of  England.  Literally  he  was  driven  from  the 
City  Temple  by  his  unimaginative  church  officers.  Under 
the  protracted  strain  of  three  great  services  a  week,  with 
every  sermon  he  preached  being  reported  and  published 
verbatim,  Mr.  Campbell,  never  a  robust  man,  felt  his 
strength  ebbing.  Some  relief  was  an  absolute  necessity. 
He  asked  to  be  given  a  colleague  at  the  City  Temple,  and 
he  sounded  Dr.  Hugh  Black  of  New  York  (formerly  of 
Free  St.  George’s  Church,  Edinburgh)  with  a  view  to 
(  their  becoming  equal  partners  in  the  pastorate.  But  the 
/  deacons  created  difficulties.  T^ir  idea  was  that  the  City 
i  Temple  pulpit  must  have  an  outstanding  preacher  who 
^  coul^be  heard  only  at  the  City  Temple.  Dr.  Black  would 
not  have  conformed  to  that  condition.  Anyway,  without 
exploring  the  possibilities  the  proposal  was  vetoed,  and 
Mr.  Campbell,  overborne  by  the  burden,  struggled  on 
for  a  while.  An  overture  from  the  Bishop  of  London 
and  a  conversation  with  Bishop  Gore,  with  whom  Mr. 
Campbell  had  been  in  association  in  his  Oxford  days, 
coupled  with  Mr.  Campbell’s  undergraduate  affiliation 
with  the  Anglican  Church,  opened  the  way  of  release — 
into  the  fold  of  Episcopacy.  All  through  his  Free  Church 
ministry  Mr.  Campbell  had  been  in  Nonconformity  rather 
than  of  it,  and  the  wrench,  I  imagine,  occasioned  him  no 
such  agony  of  soul  as  John  Henry  Newman  endured.  But 
Mr.  Campbell’s  reversion  caused  many  sad  hearts  in  the 
Free  Churches.  He  had  innumerable  friends  who  loved 
him  still  and  watched  his  departure  from  their  midst  with 
sorrowing  spirits.  They  have  followed  his  later  course 
with  wistful  interest.  It  seems  the  inevitable  fate  of  Free 
Church  ministers,  however  distinguished,  who  go  over  to 
the  Established  Church  to  suffer  eclipse,  and  the  Church 


124 


The  Best  I  Remember 


of  England  has  succeeded  in  making  a  mute,  inglorious 
Milton  of  even  R.  J.  Campbell. 

King  Edward  was  interested  in  Rev.  R.  J.  Campbell, 
and  wanted  to  hear  him  preach.  The  King  could  not  go 
to  a  Dissenting  Chapel  or  the  heavens  would  have  fallen. 
But  Edward  VII  was  not  the  man  to  be  thwarted  by  any 
little  obstacle,  and  a  plan  was  formulated  for  Mr.  Campbell 
to  preach  at  Windsor  Castle  Chapel  one  Sunday.  All  the 
arrangements  were  kept  secret,  and  I  remember  how 
startled  Mr.  Campbell  was  one  day  when  incidentally  I 
mentioned  that  I  had  heard  of  the  plan.  Possibly  he  was 
even  more  astonished  that  a  journalist  could  keep  a  secret 
of  that  kind  out  of  his  newspaper.  The  arrangements  were 
all  complete,  but  Mr.  Campbell,  just  before  the  date  fixed, 
upset  the  whole  scheme  by  publicly  protesting  at  the  City 
Temple  against  the  Tzar  Nicolas  of  Russia  being  given  a 
national  welcome  in  England  just  after  the  peasants* 
massacre  at  Moscow.  That  was  an  unforgivable  offence 
against  royalty,  and  King  Edward  in  consequence  never 
heard  Mr.  Campbell  preach. 

Frail  though  he  was,  Mr.  Campbell  persisted  for  years 
in  a  system  of  sermon  preparation  which  must  have  placed 
a  terribly  exhausting  strain  on  his  nervous  forces.  He  did 
not  write  his  sermons,  nor  even  skeletonize  the  line  of 
argument.  Literally  he  went  into  the  pulpit  without  a 
line  or  a  note.  Often,  two  hours  before  preaching,  he 
would  not  even  have  selected  a  subject.  His  whole  plan 
of  study  work  was,  however,  designed  to  make  this 
method,  apparently  so  haphazard  and  precarious,  serve  him 
effectively.  A  voracious  reader  of  history,  philosophy, 
theology,  belle  lettres,  poetry  and  drama,  and  possessed  of 
a  memory  so  extraordinarily  tenacious  that  after  two  read¬ 
ings  of  a  poem  or  a  prose  passage  he  could  repeat  it,  Mr. 
Campbell  had  always  half  a  dozen  “growing”  sermon 
themes  running  in  his  mind.  At  the  very  last  moment, 
say  an  hour,  before  entering  the  pulpit,  he  would  go  to  his 


125 


Dr.  R.  J.  Campbell 

Study,  lie  on  a  sofa,  concentrate  his  mind  intensely  upon 
the  subject  he  had  selected,  and  preach  the  sermon  to  him¬ 
self.  When  the  time  came  to  face  his  congregation  (with 
the  inevitable  verbatim  reporter  in  the  side  gallery)  Mr. 
Campbell  was  perfectly  prepared.  Possibly  it  was  this 
exacting  method  of  preparation  that  gave  such  spontaneity 
to  his  earlier  preaching  and  lent  appositeness  to  the  poetical 
and  prose  quotations  that  fitted  so  perfectly  into  the  mosaic 
of  his  thought. 

Once,  when  he  was  preaching  at  my  request,  Mr. 
Campbell  asked  me  quite  casually  while  travelling  to  my 
home:  “What  do  you  want  me  to  preach  about?” 
I  was  nonplussed  for  the  moment,  but  mentioned  a 
sermon  I  had  heard  from  him  about  a  month  before,  and 
suggested  that  that  discourse  would  inspirit  our  people. 
“Yes,  I’ll  give  that,”  he  replied.  After  a  meal  he 
asked  for  an  hour’s  quiet  in  the  drawing-room.  Then  we 
walked  down  to  the  church.  The  sermon  he  preached 
was  not  quite  the  sermon  I  had  recalled.  He  epitomized 
that  former  sermon  in  a  ten  minutes’  introduction — a  gem 
in  the  way  of  finished  precis  work — and  then  carried  the 
thought  to  a  further  and  deeper  stage.  It  was  his  second 
sermon  that  day  (he  had  preached  at  midday  in  the  City 
Temple),  and  as  we  drove  to  King’s  Cross  after  the  second 
service  I  saw  very  clearly  what  ravages  his  method  of 
preaching  was  making  upon  his  vital  resources.  I  ought 
to  mention  that  he  would  not  hear  of  any  “fee  ”  for  his 
sermon.  Mr.  Campbell  was  always  free  from  any  money- 
loving  reproach — I  might  say  he  was  quixotically  free  from 
that  taint.  Later,  under  express  commands  from  his  doc¬ 
tors,  Mr.  Campbell  began  to  write  his  sermons  and  take 
his  MSS.  into  the  pulpit.  Now  he  reads  from  a  full  manu¬ 
script,  but  much  of  the  glory  of  the  old  extempore  method 
has  departed. 

Soon  after  Mr.  Campbell  became  minister  at  the  City 
Temple  the  interior  of  the  building,  which  Dr.  Parker  had 


126 


The  Best  I  Remember 


allowed  to  get  very  filthy,  was  redecorated.  The  work  was 
done  while  Mr.  Campbell  was  away  on  a  summer  tour  in 
the  United  States,  and  one  of  the  deacons,  a  pawnbroker, 
I  believe,  took  charge  of  the  renovations.  The  painting 
scheme  thus  carried  out  was  barbaric  in  splendour,  and 
gilt  entered  lavishly  into  the  decoration.  As  Kipling 
might  say  :  “It  was  magnificent,  but  was  it  art?  ”  When 
he  got  back,  Mr.  Campbell,  though  I  think  he  concealed 
his  feelings,  was  rather  horror-struck.  He  showed  my 
colleague,  Mr.  Harry  Jeffs,  over  the  gaudily  painted  in¬ 
terior,  and  was  not  greatly  shocked  when,  on  asking  the 
journalist’s  opinion  of  the  decorations,  he  received  the 
answer  :  “It  seems  to  me,  it  wants  a  promenade.” 

From  the  early  days  of  his  Brighton  ministry  until  he 
entered  the  Church  of  England  I  was  on  terms  of  some 
intimacy  with  Mr.  Campbell,  and,  though  I  have  not  seen 
him  in  recent  years,  I  received  from  him,  at  a  moment 
when  the  sky  seemed  for  ever  darkened  to  me,  a  letter  of 
the  most  gracious  sympathy  and  comfort.  And  that  leads 
me  to  say  that  the  outstanding  quality  in  Mr.  Campbell’s 
character — it  was  the  quality  that  made  his  preaching  at  the 
City  Temple  appeal  to  sorely  troubled  and  world-battered 
men  and  women — is  his  quick  sensitiveness  to  other 
people’s  pains  and  anxieties.  There  are  ministers  to  whom 
one  tells  of  a  sad  case,  of  some  shipwrecked  life,  say, 
knowing  beforehand  that  they  will  listen  with  just  the 
philosophic  calm  that  people  preserve  when  they  hear  of 
misfortunes  not  their  own.  But  Mr.  Campbell  met  a  sad 
story  with  eager  wistfulness  in  his  eyes,  and  upon  his  lips 
was  the  prompt  query:  “Do  you  think  I  could  do 
anything?  If  I  can,  I  will.”  And  he  would.  His 
Christianity  meant  personal  service,  at  whatever  cost.  He 
was  often  sadly  exploited  by  rascals  who  played  on  his 
sensitive  sympathies,  but,  ignoring  these  disillusionments, 
he  went  on  spending,  and  being  spent,  on  efforts  to  up¬ 
lift  the  poor  human  derelicts — simply,  I  believe,  because 


Dr.  R.  J.  Campbell  127 

he  feared  he  might  turn  empty  away  a  really  deserving 
appellant  for  his  help.  Weaknesses  one  saw  in  Mr. 
Campbell — in  whom  does  not  one  see  them  ? — but  my 
abiding  memory  of  him  is  of  a  man  who  is  a  Christian  to 
the  point  of  being  a  fool  about  it.  Reginald  John  Camp¬ 
bell,  John  Clifford,  Charles  Gore  and  Robert  Forman 
Horton  are  sufficient  repudiations  for  me  of  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw’s  dictum  that  “there  has  been  only  one  Christian, 
and  they  hanged  him.” 

Mr.  George  Bernard  Shaw  made  an  appearance  in  the 
pulpit  of  the  City  Temple  during  Rev.  R.  J.  Campbell’s 
era,  and  Mr.  Campbell  expressed  his  pride  that  Mr.  Shaw’s 
first  visit  to  the  City  Temple  was  paid  at  his  request.  The 
Free  Church  audience  that  listened  to  Mr.  Shaw’s  lecture 
was  in  a  state  of  blank  puzzlement  over  his  audacities  and 
irreverences.  Mr.  Shaw  said  he  thought  he  had  spoken 
in  the  City  Temple  before,  but  possibly  he  did  not  speak 
from  the  pulpit  then.  He  did  not  remember,  but  he  might 
have  “stood  on  the  communion  table.”  There  were  some 
shocked  “sh’s — sh’s  ”  at  this  characteristic  audacity,  but 
Mr.  Shaw  went  one  better.  He  objected  to  God  being 
thought  of  as  old.  “I  like  to  think  of  my  God,”  he  said, 
“as  a  young  man  with  his  career  still  before  him.  I  hate 
to  tliink  of  God  as  an  old  man  who  strikes  bargains  with 
his  creatures  about  the  salvation  of  their' souls,  or  a  God 
who  has  to  be  bribed  and  begged  from.”  There  were 
moments  when  I  thought  Mr.  Campbell  was  ill  at  ease 
that  night. 


CHAPTER  XX 


DR.  FORSYTH 

IN  journalistic  life  one  necessarily  meets  many  good 
talkers;  but  I  think  the  best  conversationalist  I  have 
known  was  Dr.  P.  T.  Forsyth,  the  learned  Principal  of 
Hackney  Congregational  College.  His  brilliance  as  a  talker 
was  dazzling — so  dazzling  that  he  made  one  disposed  to 
listen  without  saying  anything.  But  that  would  not  do  for 
Dr.  Forsyth.  He  did  not  want  to  monopolize  all  the  talk. 
His  conversation  really  was  conversation — an  exchange  of 
thoughts  and  ideas  and  humours.  W.  T.  Stead  was  a 
prodigious  talker;  but  not  in  the  sense  that  Dr.  Forsyth 
was,  because  Stead  liked  to  do  all  the  talking.  When  Dr. 
Forsyth  talked  he  was  lucid,  and  he  certainly  was  not 
always  even  intelligible  when  he  wrote.  Who  was  it  that 
said  that,  compared  with  Dr.  Forsyth’s  prose.  Browning’s 
Sordello  was  lucid?  When  he  was  in  the  right  mood — 
that  was  not  always :  for  sometimes  he  was  perversely 
angular — Dr.  Forsyth’s  wit  flashed  out  quite  effortlessly, 
and  he  could  keep  a  group  of  men  bubbling  with  his  gay 
spontaneous  humour. 

.Sometimes  Dr.  Forsyth’s  verbal  thrusts  were  not 
chivalrous,  and  he  could  be  horribly  bearish.  It  was  not 
merely  that  he  did  not  suffer  fools  gladly — he  could  not 
suffer  them  anyhow,  and  to  obtuse  people  he  was  some¬ 
times  very  brusque.  Many  a  church  at  which  he  was 
preaching  found  it  difficult  to  find  a  host  ready  to  enter¬ 
tain  Dr.  Forsyth,  who  was  not  the  kind  of  guest  whose 
presence  went  unfelt  in  an  ordinary  middle-class  home. 
On  second  visits  to  a  church  he  generally  found  himself 

1^8 


Dr.  Forsyth  129 

with  another  host.  All  allowance  has  to  be  made  for  the 
ill-health  from  which  Dr.  Forsyth  suffered  all  through  his 
later  life.  Peculiarly  sensitive  to  chills,  he  was  in  terror 
of  draughts,  and  digestive  trouble  made  him  “pernickety  ” 
about  what  he  ate  and  drank.  He  believed  that  he  had 
heart  trouble,  but  in  his  last  illness  it  was  the  soundness 
of  his  heart  aloue  that  kept  him  alive  for  months. 

Dr.  Forsyth  was  almost  the  most  conscientious  reviewer 
I  have  ever  known.  It  was  as  the  reviewer  of  the  most 
important  theological  books  for  the  Independent  and  Non¬ 
conformist  that  1  first  made  his  acquaintance.  He  was  at 
Leicester  then,  and  was  still  tarred  with  the  heretical 
brush.  All  the  really  big  German  theological  and  Biblical 
criticism  books  were  at  once  dispatched  to  him.  He  re¬ 
ceived  them  quite  politely ;  but  to  get  the  reviews  out  of 
him  was  quite  another  story.  The  reason  for  his  tardiness 
was  really  his  ultra-conscientiousness.  Before  he  passed 
judgment  on  a  book  he  wanted  not  merely  to  read  it  but 
to  use  it  as  a  tool  in  sermon-making.  He  felt  the  responsi¬ 
bility  of  recommending  other  preachers  to  spend  their 
money  on  a  book  until  he  had  made  sure  that  it  was 
going  to  give  them  full  value  for  their  outlay.  Perhaps 
it  is  well  for  authors  generally  that  all  reviewers  do  not 
take  their  responsibility  with  such  portentous  seriousness; 
but  it  would  be  better  perhaps  for  theological  science  if 
such  caution  were  more  generally  exercised. 

Even  when  a  review  of  a  book  had  been  dragged  out 
of  'Dr.  Forsyth  by  frequent  and  vehement  reminders  my 
troubles  as  an  editor  did  not  end.  He  always  insisted  on 
revising  a  proof ;  and  when  a  revised  proof  came  back 
from  Dr.  Forsyth  I  invariably  had  cold  shivers.  It  is  literal 
truth  to  say  that  after  correction  by  him  scarcely  a  single 
line  of  type  survived  unaltered.  I  generally  found  it 
cheaper  to  have  the  whole  article  reset,  rather  than  meet 
the  printer’s  bill  for  corrections.  Even  then  the  anxieties 
were  not  over.  Dr.  Forsyth  was  quite  capable  of  tele- 


130 


The  Best  I  Remember 


graphing  for  a  revised  proof,  and  the  revision  of  his  first 
revision  gave  one  fits.  Another  weakness  of  Dr.  Forsyth’s 
as  a  writer  was  his  utter  disregard  of  all  consideration 
about  space.  He  wrote  at  prodigious  length,  and  would 
brook  no  curtailment  of  his  copy.  Moreover,  he  was  im¬ 
patient  if  a  review  he  had  written  was  not  promptly 
published.  I  might  have  waited  months  for  it  to  be 
written ;  but  he  would  not  wait  a  fortnight  for  it  to  be 
printed  after  he  had  written  it.  On  the  whole,  he  was  not 
a  comfortable  contributor. 

I  once  got  into  very  hot  water  with  Dr.  Forsyth  for 
suggesting  that  the  sermon  he  preached  before  the  National 
Free  Church  Council  was  a  “traveller.”  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  I  had  heard  him  preach  three  parts  of  the  sermon  in 
a  South  London  church,  and  I  had  read  a  report  of  the 
same  sermon  in  a  Yorkshire  paper.  But  he  was  furious 
when  I  hinted  that  the  sermon  had  been  preached  before 
he  preached  it  at  the  Free  Church  Council.  He  had 
merely,  no  doubt,  been  “trying  on  the  dog,”  so  to  speak, 
or  getting  familiar  with  the  MSS.  before  the  great  occa¬ 
sion  for  which  it  was  written.  Anyway,  I  hurt  his  feeL 
ings;  but  when  on  the  eve  of  Christmas  I  begged  his 
forgiveness  because  I  did  not  want  to  carry  a  feud  over  the 
Festival  of  Peace,  I  got  from  him  a  most  gracious  letter 
that  wiped  away  any  resentment  I  might  have  harboured. 
And  ever  afterwards  we  met  as  good  friends.  I  cherish 
the  memory  of  a  day  I  spent  with  him  at  Hackney  College 
in  the  summer  of  1919 — just  before  the  break-up  of  his 
health.  The  vivacity  of  his  talk  that  day  was  an  inspira¬ 
tion. 

Dr.  Forsyth  came  very  near,  it  seemed  to  me,  to  deny¬ 
ing  all  private  judgment  in  religion.  Only  the  expert, 
he  practically  said,  had  a  right  to  a  theological  opinion, 
and  he  was  contemptuous  upon  lay  amateurs  who  dared  to 
entertain  a  doctrinal  opinion  that  did  not  come  ready  made 
to  them  from  experts  like  himself.  The  average  man  is 


Dr.  Forsyth  131 

baffled  as  to  where  authority  in  religion  resides — whether 
it  is  in  an  historical  Church,  an  inspired  book,  or  in  the 
“inner  light  ”  in  his  own  soul  as  it  falls  upon  the  Church 
and  the  Bible.  But  Dr.  Forsyth  seemed  to  sweep  all  three 
away  and  substitute  the  expert  theologian  as  the  authority. 
I  heard  him  sneer  at  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  for  venturing  to 
address  Congregational  ministers  on  the  future  life  without 
(as  Dr.  Forsyth  put  it)  giving  a  scrap  of  evidence  that  he 
had  ever  mastered  a  single  Pauline  Epistle  in  the  Greek. 
It  made  me  think  of  the  old  story  of  a  Cambridge  College 
organist  who  fell  in  Hobson’s  run  on  his  way  home  from 
a  bump  supper,  but  declined  to  be  helped  out  of  the  stream 
by  a  policeman  “who  could  not  play  Bach’s  fugue  in  E 
minor.” 

A  student  once  gave  a  curious  exegesis  of  a  text  in 
sermon  class  at  Hackney  College  and  quoted  Dr.  Camp¬ 
bell  Morgan  as  his  authority.  Some  of  the  other  students 
smiled.  His  Principal,  Dr.  Forsyth  (whose  razor-edged 
wit  was  almost  as  notable  as  his  profound  scholarship), 
rebuked  the  students.  “I  should  be  very  proud,”  he  said, 
“if  the  students  of  Hackney  College  knew  the  Bible  as 
well  as  Dr.  Campbell  Morgan  knows  his  Bible.” 

Dean  Stanley  vowed  that  Caird’s  sermon  on  “Religion 
in  Common  Life  ”  is  the  greatest  sermon  in  the  English 
tongue,  and  I  suppose  it  is;  but  I  question  whether  it  had 
as  stupendous  an  influence  on  religious  thought  as  Dr. 
Forsyth’s  sermon  on  “The  Holy  Father  ”  preached  before 
the  Congregational  Union  at  Leicester  in  1896.  That 
massive  sermon  stood  out  like  a  watershed  in  theological 
thought.  Undoubtedly  it  altered  the  current  of  theological 
thinking  in  the  Free  Churches,  and  especially  in  Congrega¬ 
tionalism,  by  recovering  the  sense  of  the  awe  of  God,  which 
was  being  lost  through  over-emphasis  on  the  benevolent 
fatherhood  of  God.  His  use  of  Coventry  Patmore’s  ex¬ 
quisite  little  poem  “The  Toys”  was  masterly  in  its 
appositeness.  For  the  rest  of  his  life  Dr.  Forsyth  con- 


132 


The  Best  I  Remember 


centrated  his  theological  thinking  upon  the  doctrine  of  the 
Cross.  Certainly  he  did  seem  to  carry  his  emphasis  on 
“the  cruciality  of  the  Cross  ”  to  a  point  where  it  obliterated 
all  sense  of  the  eternal  love  and  landed  us  back  in  the 
Old  Testament  atmosphere  of  sacrifice  to  placate — and  even 
change  the  mind  of — an  angry  God. 

Though  not  a  pedant,  Dr.  Forsyth  carried  an  air  of 
scholarship  about  with  him.  This  was  rather  awe-inspir¬ 
ing;  but  whenever  I  felt  it  a  little  overwhelming  I  remem¬ 
bered  his  consuming  passion  for  reading  detective  stories 
— good,  bad  or  indifferent.  The  thought  made  him  seem 
quite  human  again. 


CHAPTER  XXI 


WOMEN  IN  JOURNALISM 

WOMEN  writers  had  not  invaded  Fleet  Street  in  force 
when  first  I  came  to  London  ;  but  an  advance  guard  of 
lady  journalists  was  making  a  peaceful  penetration  into  pre¬ 
cincts  hitherto  sacred  to  the  male  sex.  My  brother,  Edward 
Porritt,  author  of  “The  Unreformed  House  of  Commons,” 
and  later  Professor  of  English  Constitutional  History  at 
Harvard  University,  Mass.,  gave  every  encouragement 
to  the  women  who  were  pioneering  in  journalism.  As 
London  editor  of  the  Manchester  Examiner  he  found 
women  peculiarly  sensitive  to  the  distinctive  atmosphere 
that  a  good  London  Letter  must  possess,  and  he  employed 
some  of  the  new-comers  freely  on  this  specialized  para¬ 
graphic  work.  Miss  O’Connor  Eccles,  now  well  known 
as  a  novelist,  practised  her  ’prentice  hand,  and  Miss 
Catharine  Grant  Furley  did  distinguished  work  on  that 
London  Letter.  Fresh  from  NewnUam  and  full  of  the  new 
wine  of  confidence  inspired  by  Miss  Millicent  Garrett 
Fawcett’s  triumph  over  the  senior  wrangler  of  her  year 
came  Miss  Alice  Stronach,  who  became  a  familiar  figure 
in  Fleet  Street.  Dogged  by  physical  weakness.  Miss 
Stronach  (who  paid  for  her  last  year  at  Newnham  by  writ¬ 
ing  a  history  for  schools)  put  up  a  plucky  running  fight 
for  twenty-five  years.  Her  stoicism  always  made  me  feel 
humble  in  her  presence.  So  many  of  her  promising  pro¬ 
jects  collapsed  owing  to  her  persistent  ill-health  that  one 
might  have  expected  her  to  be  soured.  But  she  was  “ever 
a  fighter,”  and  from  each  knock-down  blow  she  rose  to 
fight  better.  I  lost  sight  of  her  during  the  war  (when 

133 


134 


The  Best  I  Remember 


her  free-lance  work  in  Fleet  Street  almost  melted  away), 
and  I  had  made  up  my  mind  to  write  to  her,  through  the 
Lyceum  Club,  when  I  saw  her  name  in  the  death  announce¬ 
ments.  Miss  Stronach  never  had  the  physique  for 
journalism,  with  its  inevitably  irregular  hours,  its  sudden 
and  often  exorbitant  demands  on  nervous  and  physical 
energy  and  its  incessant  disappointments  and  uncertainties. 
Only  a  woman  of  the  wiry  type  or  of  an  extremely  phlegma¬ 
tic  or  imperturbable  temperament  ought  to  venture  on  the 
shoals  of  journalistic  life.  Still,  there  are  some  things  in 
journalism  that  a  woman  can  do  infinitely  better  than  a 
man,  as  Miss  Jane  T.  Stoddart  has  shown. 

Miss  Honnor  Morten  was  already  pouring  the  sunshine 
of  her  gracious  presence  on  Fleet  Street  when  I  joined  the 
Mayichester  Examiner  staff,  and  she  was  frequently  in  and 
out  of  the  office,  clad  in  the  brown  cloak  that  the  poor 
people  of  Hoxton  loved  to  see  in  their  drab  streets.  Miss 
Morten  was  always  rather  on  the  fringe  of  journalism  than 
in  it.  Really  she  used  journalism  to  push  along  the  social 
and  educational  schemes  for  which  she  gave  up  a  sumptuous 
home  m  one  of  the  old  Stuart  palaces  at  Richmond.  Her 
mother  was  a  sister  of  William  Black,  the  novelist,  and  her 
father  a  close  friend  of  Andrew  Lang’s.  Miss  Morten  was  a 
great  favourite  of  Herbert  Spencer’s,  who  loved  her  to  play 
billiards  with  him  at  Brighton.  All  the  family  forces  were 
mobilized  upon  Honnor  Morten  to  keep  her  out  of  public 
life;  but  an  aimless  society  life  was  unthinkable  to  her. 
She  used  to  tell  us  of  her  first  great  fight  for  liberty — her 
demand  of  a  latchkey  from  her  father.  Educated  at  Bed¬ 
ford  College,  she  determined  first  to  be  a  nurse,  and  went 
through  her  hospital  training.  Then  she  edited  the 
Hospital,  wrote  a  guide  to  nursing,  a  dictionary  for  nurses, 
and  started  an  association — on  trade  union  lines — for 
nurses.  Always  she  had  some  ambitious  altruistic  project 
in  hand,  and  doing  a  little  journalistic  work  helped  her  to 
forward  their  progress.  For  a  time  she  served  on  the 


Women  in  Journalism 


135 


London  School  Board,  but  retired  in  disgust  as  a  protest 
against  corporal  punishment  in  elementary  schools.  I 
often  had  tea  with  her  at  the  old  School  Board  buildings  on 
board  days.  One  day  I  found  her  in  hilarious  mood.  At 
that  time  the  Duke  of  Devonshire,  who  was  President  of 
the  Board  of  Education,  had  caused  much  amusement  by  a 
terrible  display  of  his  total  ignorance  of  the  elementary 
school  system  which  was  under  his  immediate  super¬ 
vision.  Mr.  Graham  Wallas  had  made  merry  over  the 
Duke’s  lapse.  Thereupon  Miss  Morten  had  tacked  on 
the  London  School  Board  notice-board  an  announcement 
that  ran  : 

That  a  fund  shall  be  and  is  hereby  opened  to  raise 
sufficient  money  to  send  Mr.  Graham  Wallas  for  one  month 
to  Monte  Carlo  with  the  Duke  of  Devonshire,  in  the  sure 
and  certain  hope  that  Mr.  Graham  Wallas  will  return 
knowing  something  of  the  world  and  the  Duke  knowing 
something  about  education.” 

Miss  Morten  was  the  merriest  of  saints  and  delighted  in 
a  little  mild  mischief.  She  founded  a  dining  club — a  parody 
of  the  Whitefriars  Club — to  which  she  gave  the  name  the 
Humbug  Club.  I  went  to  one  of  the  dinners  in  a  Soho 
restaurant.  MissI  Morten  presided,  with  an  axe  suspended 
by  a  thread  over  the  table.  It  was  a  modern  sword  of 
Damocles  in  readiness  to  brain  the  first  speaker  who  ven¬ 
tured  on  anything  approaching  mutual  admiration. 

Tiring  of  London’s  “sturm  und  drang,”  Miss  Morten 
carried  out  a  scheme  upon  which  she  had  long  set  her 
heart.  She  had  spent  much  time  at  Assisi  and  had  caught 
the  St.  Francis  spirit.  The  idea  of  being  wedded  to 
poverty  attracted  her,  and  when  she  received  an  unexpected 
legacy  she  bought  a  large  house  at  Rotherfield  in  Sussex 
and  had  it  reconstructed  on  monastic  lines.  There  she 
offered  a  home  for  well-to-do  middle-aged  women  with  no 
object  in  life,  on  terms  which  allowed  one  wing  of  the  build¬ 
ing  to  be  filled  with  ailing  children  from  the  slums  of 

j 


The  Best  I  Remember 


136 

Hoxton.  The  little  ones  were  housed,  fed,  taught,  and 
kept  in  the  fresh  Sussex  hill  air  until  they  were  quite 
strong. 

The  whole  household  was  run  on  lines  of  Spartan 
simplicity  and  under  some  curious  monastic  regulations. 
One  rule  insisted  on  silence  at  the  breakfast  table — on  the 
principle  that  people  are  never  amiable  at  breakfast. 
Another  rule  ordained  that  all  inmates  should  retire  for  an 
hour’s  quietude  during  the  day.  As  Miss  Morten  was  the 
soul  of  the  settlement  there  was  no  danger  of  the  gravity  of 
things  settling  into  boredom.  She  encouraged  the  little 
East  Londoners  staying  at  Rotherfield  to  stop  in  their  play 
and  be  still  for  a  few  minutes  whenever  they  heard  the 
angelus  bell  of  a  Catholic  monastery  near  by.  She  was  a 
firm  Protestant,  and  was  writing  a  life  of  Edward  Colman, 
the  Protestant  martyr  hanged  at  Tyburn,  when  her  fatal 
illness  came  upon  her.  The  Rotherfield  experiment  was 
proving  in  all  senses  a  success  when  Miss  Morten  was 
stricken  with  cancer  in  the  throat.  I  had  lunched  with  her 
at  the  Lady  Writers’  Club — one  of  a  very  happy  party ^ — 
one  Saturday,  and  a  few  days  later  I  received  a  desperate 
letter  from  her  saying  that  she  had  received  her  death  sen¬ 
tence.  I  wrote  begging  to  be  allowed  to  go  down  to  see 

her.  In  reply  I  had  a  touching  note.  It  ran  : 

\ 

Dear  Arthur  Porritt, — Your  kind  letter  was  a  great  help, 
but  don’t  come  and  see  me.  My  voice  has  gone  and  I  suffer 
from  restlessness  and  mindlessness,  besides  the  other  ills.  I 
can’t  “greet  the  unseen  with  a  cheer” — from  physical  disabili¬ 
ties  !  but  I  can  greet  it  without  fear  : 

For  the  love  of  God  is  larger  (sic) 

Than  the  measures  of  mankind  (sic), 

And  the  heart  of  the  Eternal 
Is  most  wonderfully  kind. 

I  have  always  wanted  to  transpose  “When  wilt  Thou  save 
the  people  ”  thus  : 


Women  in  Journalism 


137 


When  wilt  thou  save  the  children, 

Lord  God  of  mercy,  when  ? 

Not  kings  and  queens  and  ladies. 

Not  dukes  and  dames  and  men. 

But  children.  Lord,  the  children  ! 

Flowers  of  Thy  heart,  sweet  Christ,  are  they. 

Let  them  not  wilt  in  death  away 
Their  heritage  a  sunless  day. 

Lord,  save  the  children  ! 

It  seems  to  me  too  late  to  save  when  childhood  is  past.  I  hope 
I  shall  live  over  the  L.C.C.  election  to  see  someone  strike  a 
blow  for  the  children. 

I  am  so  g'lad  you  have  children  of  your  own. 

If  I  pull  throug'h  this  bout  I’ll  Write  again. 

Yours  gratefully  and  in  all  friendship, 

Honnor  Morten. 

A  month  later  I  was  allowed  to  see  Miss  Morten,  as  her 
end  was  nearing.  She  was  quite  cheerful  herself,  and 
begged  me  to  take  a  cheerful  farewell.  “You  know,”  she 
said,  “I  am  not  going  to  allow  anything  to  interfere  with 
my  enjoying  my  dying.”  ^  ^ 

Another  lady  journalist  belonging  to  the  pioneer  group 
was  Miss  Hulda  Friederichs,  a  very  versatile  writer,  who 
later  became  Lord  Morley’s  literary  secretary.  As  she 
worked  almost  exclusively  for  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  and 
later  for  the  W estminster  Gazette,  Miss  Friederichs  hardly 
took  all  the  risks  of  a  free  lance  in  “Grub  Street.”  On 
one  occasion  Miss  Friederichs  met  with  an  uncomfortable 
experience.  She  had  attended,  as  a  journalist,  a  children’s 
ball  at  the  Mansion  House,  and  late  at  night  went  to  the 
old  Pall  Mall  office  in  Northumberland  Street  to  write  her 
“copy.”  On  coming  out  of  the  office  the  train  of  her 
evening  dress  caught  in  the  street-door  as  she  closed 
it.  She  could  not  reach  the  bell  to  call  down  the  house¬ 
keeper,  and  as  it  was  the  dead  of  night  when  no  one  was 


138  The  Best  I  Remember 

passing  she  had  to  tear  away  her  dress,  leaving  the  best 
part  of  her  train  behind  her. 

The  early  prejudice  against  lady  journalists  was  strong 
for  a  time  in  the  ’nineties,  but  it  has,  I  believe,  died  away 
— largely,  I  think,  because  the  lady  journalists  take  the 
rough  work  with  the  smooth — asking  no  concessions  for 
their  sex — and  because,  from  the  first,  they  did  not  under¬ 
cut  men  in  remuneration.  In  journalism,  as  a  rule,  women 
are  paid  equal  rates  for  equal  work  with  men. 


CHAPTER  XXII 


SOME  CONTRASTS  AND  A  MORAL 

ONE  of  the  cardinal  differences  between  the  Episcopal 
Church  and  the  Free  Churches  is  that,  while  the  lay¬ 
men  in  the  Episcopal  Church  count  for  too  little,  the  lay¬ 
men,  or  perhaps  I  should  say  the  wealthy  laymen,  count  for 
too  much  in  the  Free  Churches.  It  is  true  to  say  that  the 
Free  Churches  have  been  wonderful  training  schools  for  lay¬ 
men,  and  some  of  our  most  eminent  politicians,  education¬ 
alists,  municipal  leaders  and  social  workers  owe  their  im¬ 
pulse  towards  public  service  to  the  experience  gained  in 
early  life  in  the  Sunday-schools,  Young  Men’s  Societies, 
and  other  organizations  connected  with  Nonconformist 
chapels.  Still,  one  cardinal  weakness  of  Nonconformity  in 
the  Victorian  age  was  its  worship  of  success.  It  bred 
nearly  all  the  Smiles’  heroes  and  it  idolized  self-made  men. 
So,  alongside  much  that  was  fine  a  subtle  materialism  crept 
into  the  very  heart  of  the  Free  Churches.  Even  to  this 
day  wealth  exercises  an  influence  in  the  Free  Churches 
which  merit  and  ability  cannot  rival.  In  the  Primitive 
Methodist  Church,  for  example,  it  is  the  custom  even  yet 
for  anyone  who  ha_si  contributed  ^loo  or  more  in  any  year 
to  be  given  a  denominational  vote  of  thanks.  The  widow’s 
mite  is  taken  as  a  m.atter  of  course.  Some  of  the  younger 
Primitive  Methodists  "have  come  to  realize  that  this  is  an 
anomaly  and  a  contradiction  of  the  very  spirit  of  Jesus,  and 
the  anachronism  is  perhaps  doomed  to  early  eradication. 

The  tyranny  of  the  cheque-book  is,  I  think,  felt  more  in 
Free  Churchism  than  in  Anglicanism.  I  remember  many 
instances;  but  the  most  glaring  occurred  in  a  well-known 

139 


140 


The  Best  I  Remember 


West  London  Congregational  Church.  The  minister  of 
this  church,  a  famous  preacher,  laid  it  down  as  a  rule  that 
all  candidates  for  membership  should  go  through  a 
Catechumen  course.  But  when  a  certain  millionaire  pre¬ 
sented  himself  for  membership  the  rule  was  waived  in  his 
case.  I  once  heard  another  famous  minister  defending  an 
official  whose  efficiency  was  being  questioned,  with  the 
remark  :  “Still,  he  gets  on  so  well  with  our  rich  people.” 
At  Whitefield’s  Central  Mission  in  Silvester  Horne’s  time 
it  was  understood  that  the  layman  invited  to  preside  at  the 
annual  meeting  should  be  a  man  who  would  contribute 
;^ioo  to  the  mission’s  funds.  He  might  spoil  the  meeting 
by  his  prosy  speech  or  by  his  pomposity,  but  his  cheque 
for  ;£^ioo  was  accepted  as  covering  a  multitude  of  sins. 
A  man  who  reached  the  very  apex  of  his  professional  call¬ 
ing  as  an  actuary  once  told  me  that  experience  had  led  him 
tO'  conclude  that  Congregationalism  had  no  use  for  anyone 
who  had  not  a  long  purse.  He  was  a  brilliant  speaker  and 
was  a  man  whose  spiritual  force  singled  him  out  for  leader¬ 
ship,  not  only  in  his  own  church,  but  in  the  denomination  ; 
but  he  could  not  compete  with  successful  tradesmen  in  the 
liberality  of  his  donations.  The  Free  Churches  boast  an 
equality  in  fellowship,  which  in  practice  does  not  exist. 
Perhaps,  though  ideally  beautiful,  such  equality  is  not 
possible.  Still,  the  deference  paid  to  rich  men  in  Free 
Churches  is  a  fatal  barrier  to  any  real  rapprochement  with 
the  working  classes. 

Even  if  the  Reunion  of  the  Churches  never  comes  it  is 
a  priceless  advantage  due  to  the  growing  entente  between 
church  and  chapel,  to  have  got  rid  of  libellous  misconcep¬ 
tions  on  both  sides.  I  remember  when  Nonconformists 
were  quite  convinced  that  no  real  gospel  was  preached  in 
Established  Churches,  and  when  churchmen  believed  that 
Nonconformists  had  no  idea  of  reverential  worship.  Now 
I  suppose  more  Anglicans  go  occasionally  to  Free 


Some  Contrasts  and  a  Moral  141 

Churches  than  at  any  time  since  1662,  and  more  Free 
Church  people  join  occasionally  with  Episcopalians  at 
“Common  Prayer”  than  ever  in  their  history.  And  with 
this  new  spirit  of  fraternity  has  come  a  better  general 
understanding.  Thirty  years  ago  Churchmen  looked  upon 
Nonconformists  as  “  political  dissenters,”  whose  dissocia¬ 
tion  from  the  Established  Church  was  due  to  political  feel¬ 
ing  even  more  than  to  religious  principle.  And  the  Non¬ 
conformists  of  that  time  regarded  the  Church  of  England 
(to  borrow  a  phrase  coined  later  by  Miss  Maude  Royden) 
as  merely  “the  Conservative  party  at  prayer.”  To  have 
got  out  of  this  vicious  circle  of  misconception  is  an  infinite 
gain. 

When  the  history  of  the  church  unity  movement  comes 
to  be  written  I  imagine  that  the  historian  will  be  compelled 
to  recognize  that  the  new  and  happier  relationships  between 
the  churches,  Established  and  Free,  Scottish  as  well  as 
English,  date  from  the  Edinburgh  World  Missionary 
Conference  of  1910.  Really  the  movement  began  long 
before  the  Conference — in  the  foreign  mission  fields,  where 
a  comity  spirit  had  taken  form  within  the  previous  ten 
years.  But  “Edinburgh,  1910,”  was  a  public  demonstra¬ 
tion  at  home  of  the  wonderful  degree  of  co-operation  that 
was  in  being  among  missionaries  of  all  the  churches  in 
India,  China,  Africa  and  the  isles  of  the  South  Seas.  The 
Edinburgh  Conference  was  a  pinnacle  in  ecclesiastical 
time — if  putting  it  so  does  not  mix  the  metaphors.  It 
knocked  the  glass  off  the  denominational  party  walls  and 
ushered  in  a  new  age  in  missionary  history.  Since  1910 
all  the  British  missionary  societies  have  federated  them¬ 
selves  into  a  conference,  meeting  annually,  with  standing 
committees  meeting  frequently,  and  with  a  staff  of  experts 
in  missionary  matters  as  secretaries  and  officials.  Either 
as  a  journalist,  or  as  a  representative  of  the  London  Mis¬ 
sionary  Society,  I  have  been  present  at  four  or  five  of  the 


142 


The  Best  I  Remember 


annual  conferences  of  this  association  of  the  British  mis¬ 
sionary  societies,  and  the  spectacle  of  High  Churchmen 
foregathering  with  Quakers,  Evangelical  Anglicans  con¬ 
ferring  with  Baptists,  Presbyterians,  Methodists  and  Con- 
gregationalists,  all  on  an  equal  footing,  has  hardly  a 
parallel  as  a  demonstration  of  essential  unity.  Here  the 
ritualistic  lion  lies  down  with  the  schismatic  lamb — or 
rather,  links  forces  to  devise  methods  of  co-operation  in 
producing  missionary  literature,  planning  missionary  pro¬ 
paganda  campaigns  at  home,  devising  courses  of  special 
training  for  missionary  candidates,  facing  governments 
with  a  united  front,  and  even  in  avoiding  overlapping  in  the 
foreign  fields  by  limiting  frontiers  and  defining  spheres  of 
influence.  The  harmony  and  camaraderie  that  prevail  at 
these  conferences  of  British  missionary  societies  would  be 
a  source  of  sheer  bewilderment  to  the  ghosts  of  missionary 
society  leaders  of  a  past  generation,  could  they  but  emerge 
from  their  graves  as  visitants  at  the  conferences.  The 
growing  amity  in  the  mission  fields  was  undoubtedly  one 
of  the  factors  that  led  the  bishops  at  the  Pan  Anglican 
Conference  of  1920  to  make  their  historic  pronouncement 
appealing  for  reunion. 

Dr.  John  Mott  contributed  hugely  to  the  influence  of 
the  Edinburgh  Conference  and  the  work  of  the  Edinburgh 
Continuation  Committee.  He  presided  at  Edinburgh,  and 
won  eternal  fame  by  peremptorily  ringing  down  a  British 
bishop  who  was  going  on  speaking  after  the  gong  had 
intimated  that  his  time  was  up.  Perhaps  even  more 
audacious  was  Dr.  Mott’s  democratic  spirit  shown  in  the 
selection  of  the  speakers  from  those  who  sent  up  their 
cards  to  indicate  their  wish  to  take  part  in  the  discussion. 
Lord  Kinnaird  sent  up  his  card  several  times,  but  Dr.  Mott 
did  not  call  upon  him  to  speak.  Lord  Kinnaird  did  not 
like  it  at  all,  but  Dr.  Mott  is  an  American,  and  que  zwulez 
vous? 


Some  Contrasts  and  a  Moral  143 

Newspaper  readers  with  memories  that  go  back  thirty- 
years  cannot  fail,  I  imagine,  to  notice  how  scantily  re¬ 
ligious  matters  are  reported  nowadays.  In  1890,  when  I 
first  attended  the  May  Assemblies  of  the  Congregational 
Union  of  England  and  Wales,  provision  had  to  be  made 
at  the  press  tables  for  about  thirty  reporters.  Nowadays, 
three  or  four  press  seats  meet  all  the  needs  and  even  those 
seats  are  not  often  occupied  after  the  first  day’s  assembly. 
In  1890  the  Daily  News  devoted  two  or  three  columns  to 
the  Union’s  daily  proceedings.  The  Times  generally  set 
apart  a  column.  No  London  daily  failed  to  give  some  re¬ 
port,  and  the  leading  provincial  papers  printed  the  Press 
Association’s  special  daily  column.  Nowadays,  all  these 
papers  either  severely  abbreviate  their  reports  or  ignore 
the  Congregational  Union  altogether.  I  do  not  think  the 
revaluation  of  values  made  by  the  modern  editor  wholly 
explains  this  change.  Thirty  years  ago  the  Congrega¬ 
tional  Union  focused  Nonconformist  opinion  on  many 
great  issues,  moral,  ecclesiastical  and  political,  and  its 
resolutions,  with  the  weighty  speeches  by  which  they  were 
advocated,  were  of  the  highest  news  value.  Noncon¬ 
formity  was  then  the  backbone  of  Liberalism,  and 
Liberalism  was  fighting  for  civil  and  religious  equality. 
An  utterance  by  Dr.  Dale  or  Dr.  Guinness  Rogers  was  a 
matter  of  national  concern.  To-day  the  Congregational 
Union  scarcely  succeeds  in  voicing  Free  Church  opinion  on 
great  issues.  Political  questions  are  now  mainly  economic, 
issues,  and  upon  economic  issues  the  Churches  (as  Dr.\ 
Reaveley  Glover  has  said)  are  in  alliance  with  capitalism  ] 
and  economic  orthodoxy — or,  at  all  events,  the  Igader^  1 
and  the  younger  and  more  ardent  spirits  are  mute,  if  not 
gagged,  at  the  denominational  assembly.  Even  the  moral 
issues  lying  beneath  such  questions  as  industrialism, 
housing  and  public  health  do  not  always  stir  the 
Congregational  Union  to  challenge  Sam  Weller’s 
dictum  that  “Whatever  is,  is.”  This  is  true  in 


144 


The  Best  I  Remember 


a  large  measure,  too,  of  the  Baptist  Union,  though  Dr. 
Clifford  has  been  accustomed  to  raise  his  mighty  voice  in 
that  assembly  and  to  speak  like  a  modern  Amos  on 
righteousness  in  the  sphere  of  economics.  This  policy  of 
“  playing  jpr^^aiety  ”  on  vexed  issues  explains  more  than 
the  neglect  by  the  press  of  religious  gatherings — it  prac¬ 
tically  explains  the  studied  aloofness  of  the  working  classes 
from  organized  Christianity.  After  the  war  all  the  Free 
Church  assemblies  shared  the  moral  numbness  of  the 
English  people.  A  few  presentations  at  Court  and  access 
by  some  leading  ministers  to  the  Downing  Street  break¬ 
fast  table  have  silenced  some  Nonconformist  consciences  on 
politico-moral  issues.  But  the  young  and  eager  spirits  are 
now  becoming  vocal. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 


GREAT  MISSIONARIES 

IN  a  journalistic  capacity,  and  also  as  a  director  for  many 
years  of  the  London  Missionary  Society,  I  have  been 
brought  into  close  contact  with  many  distinguished  foreign 
missionaries,  and  I  hold  missionaries,  as  a  body,  in  the 
highest  regard.  Among  the  most  interesting,  and,  indeed, 
heroic  men  I  have  known,  I  place  three  missionaries — Dr. 
Wilfred  T.  Grenfell  of  Labrador,  Rev.  Sam  Pollard  of 
Yunnan,  and  Rev.  Charles  W.  Abel  of  Kwato.  In  their 
differing  spheres,  one  amid  the  eternal  snows,  the  second 
in  the  wastes  of  South  China,  and  the  third  in  tropical 
Papua,  all  these  three  missionaries  have  been  great  civi¬ 
lizing  forces  and  notable  pioneers  of  practical  Christianity. 
It  is  twelve  years  ago  since  I  met  Dr.  Grenfell  for  the  first 
time.  I  sought  an  interview  with  him  on  one  of  his  rare 
visits  to  London.  A  more  engaging  personality  it  would 
be  hard  to  discover.  His  sincerity  leaps  out  at  one.  Later 
you  discover  his  versatility  and  his  devotedness.  He  hates 
to  be  lionized,  laughs  when  you  treat  him  as  a  hero,  and 
insists  that  his  life  in  Labrador,  though  a  bit  rough,  is  the 
only  life  worth  living  because  it  is  a  life  of  service  rewarded 
by  immediate  results  in  the  happiness  and  well-being  of 
the  people  he  serves. 

I  am  always  meeting  men  who,  when  the  ice  has  been 
broken  and  a  confidential  mood  has  been  established,  con¬ 
fess  that  they  are  Moody  converts.  One  of  the  finest  men 
I  know,  a  sanitary  inspector  who  went  through  the  retreat 
from  Mons  as  a  stretcher-bearer,  surprised  me  one  day  by 
saying  that  D.  L.  Moody  made  a  man  of  him.  Mr.  A.  C. 

145 


The  Best  I  Remember 


146 

Benson  has  confessed  in  one  of  his  books  that  Moody  at 
Cambridge  made  religion  a  reality  to  him — son  of  an  Arch¬ 
bishop  as  he  is.  Dr.  Grenfell  is  a  Moody  man,  too.  It 
was  Moody’s  adroit  closuring  of  a  man,  who  was  offering 
an  inordinately  long  prayer  at  his  Whitechapel  Mission, 
with  the  remark,  “While  our  brother  finishes  his  prayer  we 
will  sing  hymn  75,”  that  captured  Dr.  Grenfell,  who  was 
groping  for  his  hat  to  beat  a  retreat  out  of  the  tent.  He 
stayed,  heard  Moody,  and  resolved  that  his  Christianity 
must  henceforth  be  the  mainspring  of  his  being.  Through 
Moody’s  influence  he  volunteered  for  medical  missionary 
work  among  the  deep-sea  fishermen  on  the  North  Sea 
trawlers.  With  them  he  went  to  the  Labrador  Coast,  and, 
finding  both  the  white  men  and  the  Eskimos  suffering  from 
sickness  and  disease,  and  eternally  harassed  by  debt,  he 
started  his  Labrador  Mission.  What  he  has  done  for 
Labrador  is  comparable  with  what  Livingstone  did  for 
Central  Africa.  He  opened  the  country  for  commerce,  and 
healed  an  open  sore  of  servitude  to  exploiters  which  was 
akin  to  the  slave  trade  that  Livingstone’s  journeys  brought 
to  an  end.  In  short,  he  has  civilized  Labrador. 

Ever  since  our  first  meeting  I  have  enjoyed  Dr.  Gren¬ 
fell’s  friendship,  and  whenever  he  is  in  England  we  renew 
our  association.  At  our  first  meeting  Dr.  Grenfell  ex¬ 
pressed  a  desire  to  meet  Mr.  Silvester  Horne,  and  I 
brought  the  two  intrepid  pioneers  in  Christian  enterprise 
together  over  a  luncheon  table.  On  a  later  visit,  at  Dr. 
Grenfell’s  request,  I  introduced  him  to  a  group  of  Labour 
leaders.  Then  came  the  war,  and  for  three  years  England 
did  not  see  Dr.  Grenfell.  But  when  peace  came,  and  he 
returned  to  England,  almost  his  first  question,  by  letter, 
was  a  request  to  hear  from  me  whether  the  leaders  of  the 
Labour  Party  still  drew  their  inspiration  from  Jesus.  Like 
Lord  Haldane,  he  seemed  to  see  no  ideaHsm  in  English 
politics  outside  the  Labour  Party,  and  though  he  comes  of 
a  Conservative  family,  he  wanted  to  meet  some  of  the 


Great  Missionaries 


147 


Labour  leaders  again.  It  was  characteristic  of  Dr.  Gren¬ 
fell;  party  or  sectarian  prejudice  is  foreign  to  him.  “If 
I  found  a  shoeblack,”  he  once  told  me,  “with  the  spirit  of 
Jesus  Christ,  I  should  want  to  sit  at  his  feet  and  learn  his 
secret.” 

The  Rev.  Samuel  Pollard,  of  Yunnan,  the  second  of  my 
modern  missionary  heroes,  was  a  United  Methodist.  Had 
he  served  under  one  of  the  great  societies,  e.g.,  the  Church 
Missionary  Society  or  the  London  Missionary  Society,  his 
name  would  have  been  a  household  word  in  English 
religious  homes.  He,  too,  was  a  dauntless  pioneer  and  a 
man  of  quite  magnetic  personality;  but  his  achievements 
gained  little  publicity  outside  the  borders  of  his  own  de¬ 
nomination.  His  work  among  the  Maio  tribe  in  Yunnan 
led  to  one  of  those  mysterious  “mass  movements”  of  a 
whole  people  from  heathenism  to  Christianity  which  delight 
people  at  home  who  read  missionary  magazines,  but  are 
apt  to  overwhelm  the  embarrassed  missionary  who  has  to 
face  the  avalanche.  Mr.  Pollard’s  faith  and  sagacity  stood 
the  test,  but  the  strain  killed  him.  One  of  his  feats  was 
to  reduce  the  tribal  language  to  writing,  create  a  grammar 
for  it,  and  then  give  the  people  a  translation  of  the  New 
Testament.  To  all  the  other  qualities  of  Mr.  Pollard  must 
be  added  the  gift  of  a  delightful  literary  style  and  an  un¬ 
failing  eye  for  the  picturesque.  Without  a  doubt  he  might 
have  made  a  reputation  in  literature,  but  I  doubt  if  he  ever 
gave  a  thought  to  making  a  reputation  of  any  kind.  He 
was  far  too  disinterested  to  be  ambitious. 

The  Rev.  Charles  W.  Abel,  my  third  modern  mis¬ 
sionary  hero,  is  at  once  a  wit,  a  sportsman,  a  statesman, 
a  captain  of  industry,  a  splendid  platform  speaker  and  a 
missionary  whose  resourcefulness  and  enterprise  have 
always  made  him  a  problem  to  the  missionary  committee 
in  London  which  administers  his  field  of  operations.  The 


The  Best  I  Remember 


148 

martyred  James  Chalmers  inducted  Charles  Abel  into  the 
joys  and  thrills  of  missionary  pioneering.  Together  they 
explored  some  of  the  rivers  of  western  New  Guinea,  pene¬ 
trated  among  cannibals  who  had  never  seen  a  white  man, 
and  escaped  the  cooking-pots  of  the  savages  by  nothing 
but  their  inspired  effrontery.  To  hear  Mr.  Abel  tell  of  a 
night  spent  in  a  steam  launch  stranded  on  a  mud  bank 
two  miles  below  a  cannibal  village  upon  whose  bewildered 
inhabitants  they  had  inflicted  a  surprise  visit  is  to  experi¬ 
ence  a  real  thrill.  It  was  as  realistic  an  episode  as  has 
ever  been  filmed  for  the  cinematograph.  Mr.  Abel’s  work 
as  a  pioneer  in  missions  has  been  on  industrial  lines.  He 
has  proved  that  the  Papuan  savage,  who,  it  was  imagined, 
was  beyond  the  power  of  civilization  or  Christianity  to 
tame,  can  be  taught  how  to  become  an  efficient  carpenter, 
a  capable  boat-builder,  a  reliable  rubber  cultivator,  a  decent 
potter,  an  excellent  blacksmith  and  a  first-rate  sportsman 
in  the  cricket  and  football  fields.  Australian  statesmen 
are  not  all  of  them  sympathetic  to  the  foreign  missionary 
enterprise  among  the  Papuans,  but  when  a  senatorial  com¬ 
mission  visited  Mr.  Abel  at  Kwato,  they  expressed  utter 
amazement  at  the  transformation  of  savages  into  civilized 
citizens  effected  by  Mr.  Abel’s  unconventional  methods. 
“Kwato,”  they  said,  “is  our  idea  of  a  model  mission 
station.”  And  when  a  deputation  from  the  London  Mis¬ 
sionary  Society  paid  a  visit  of  inspection  to  Kwato,  they 
expressed  their  astonishment  at  the  spiritual  level  attained 
in  the  native  church  there  and  their  delight  in  the  educa¬ 
tional  standard  in  the  school.  Recently  Mr.  Abel  has  been 
permitted  to  take  the  Kwato  mission  out  of  the  jurisdiction 
of  the  London  Missionary  Society  for  a  period  of  years,  so 
that  under  the  Eegis  of  a  non-dividend-paying  association, 
capitalized  by  English  and  Australian  Congregational 
laymen,  he  may  carry  his  experimental  work  in  industrial 
missions  to  a  still  more  ambitious  stage. 

When  his  old  fellow  students  at  Cheshunt  College  meet 


Great  Missionaries 


149 


and  mention  Abel  someone  recalls  some  witticism  of  his 
young  days.  And  one  recollection  never  fails  to  raise  a 
laugh.  Abel,  one  Saturday,  was  leaning  down  buckling 
on  his  batting  pads  ready  for  his  innings,  when  the  little 
daughter  of  one  of  the  professors — a  famous  Old  Testament 
scholar — passed  through  the  pavilion,  caught  Mr.  Abel 
bending,  and  gave  him  a  resounding  smack.  Her  father 
saw  what  she  had  done  and  gravely  rebuked  her.  He 
told  her,  severely,  to  go  and  apologize  for  her  rudeness. 
“Oh,  don’t  be  hard  on  her.  Doctor,”  said  Abel  quietly. 
“I  expect  she  thought  my  extremity  was  her  opportunity.” 

My  acquaintance  with  James  Chalmers,  the  famous 
Papuan  missionary  who  was  killed  and  eaten  by  cannibals 
at  Goaribari,  was  of  the  slightest.  I  met  him  only  once, 
and  that  was  at  a  crowded  reception  where  he  was  the  lion 
of  the  occasion.  He  was  a  big  burly  man  with  black  hair 
that  fell  like  a  lion’s  mane  down  his  neck.  Physical 
courage  was  stamped  all  over  him;  and  he  gave  one  just 
the  slightest  impression  of  aggressiveness.  Possibly 
living  among  savages  tends  to  make  a  man  aggressive. 
Chalmers’  eyes  flashed  defiantly  and  restlessly.  His 
manner,  though  genial,  was  what  a  schoolboy  would  call 
“swanky.”  I  thought  at  the  time  that  he  did  not  object  to 
lionizing.  But  I  am  sure  I  misjudged  him,  for  everyone 
who  knew  him  well  vouches  for  his  genuine  humility  and 
his  extreme  kindliness  of  heart.  His  life  was  one  long 
romance — a  succession  of  exciting  experiences,  hair-breadth 
escapes,  dashing  pioneering  excursions  among  the  wildest 
people  on  the  globe,  and  splendid  endeavours  to  carry  a 
gospel  of  love  to  people  who  knew  only  hates  and  fears. 
He  was  a  spiritualized  buccaneer,  saved,  perhaps,  by  the 
grace  of  God  from  being  a  pirate.  Chalmers  cast  a  spell 
over  Robert  Louis  Stevenson — which  is  a  rare  testimonial 
to  Chalmers.  They  met  on  a  Pacific  steamboat  when  the 
novelist  was  fleeing  to  Samoa  to  escape  death  from  tuber- 


150  The  Best  I  Remember 

culosis  and  Chalmers  was  trying  to  save  his  wife’s  life  by 
a  sea  voyage.  Stevenson,  who  wrote  romances,  fell  captive 
to  the  man  who  lived  them.  He  wrote  home  to  Mr.  Colvin 
praising  Chalmers  to  the  skies.  “He  is  as  big  as  a 
church,”  was  his  spacious  way  of  putting  it.  To  Chalmers 
after  they  parted  Stevenson  wrote,  “O,  Tamate,  Tamate; 
how  different  my  life  might  have  been  if  I  had  met  you 
earlier.”  After  meeting  Chalmers,  Stevenson  was  always 
an  out  and  out  defender  of  foreign  missions.  He  had  no 
patience  with  the  criticisms  of  missions  by  globe-trotters 
who  examine  them  through  the  end  of  a  whisky  glass. 
Possibly  that  masterpiece  of  philippics  that  Stevenson 
wrote  to  smash  the  traducers  of  Father  Damien  was  in¬ 
spired  by  his  chance  meeting  with  James  Chalmers.  All 
the  time  he  was  in  Samoa  Stevenson  was  the  friend  of 
the  missionaries,  and  he  took  their  view  as  to  the  proper 
treatment  of  the  natives.  Now  that  he  is  dead  the  Samoan 
natives  respect  Stevenson’s  memory  by  a  beautiful  regula¬ 
tion.  By  order  of  the  chiefs  no  native  must  discharge  a 
gun  within  earshot  of  Vailima  lest  the  birds  that  sing 
around  poor  R.  L.  S.’s  lonely  grave  might  be  frightened 
and  suspend  their  requiem. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 


AMERICA  AND  AMERICAN  HUMOUR 

ONE  of  my  pleasantest  journalistic  jaunts  was  the  visit — 
my  second — I  paid  to  America  to  represent  the 
Christian  World  at  the  Fourth  International  Congregational 
Council  at  Boston  in  July,  1920.  About  a  hundred  and  fifty 
addresses  were  given,  and  perhaps  the  only  one  that  anyone 
present  will  remember  in,  say,  1925,  came  from  a  layman — 
Mr.  Raymond  Robins.  Behind  the  man  was  ai  life  story. 
Raymond  Robins  was  ‘‘a  Philadelphia  lawyer”  in  San 
Francisco  when  gold  was  discovered  in  the  Yukon.  He 
made  a  dash  for  Klondike,  and  on  the  way  fell  in  with 
an  aristocratic  Roman  Catholic  priest  who  had  gone  into 
the  wilds  as  a  missionary  in  the  belief  that  perhaps,  a 
thousand  years  hence,  the  “magnetic  north  ”  would  be 
the  centre  of  civilization  and  that  it  needed  Christianity 
before  it  got  civilized.  Leaving  the  priest,  Raymond 
Robins  with  a  comrade  pressed  his  way  towards  Klondike. 
A  blinding  blizzard  overtook  them  and  they  lay  down  to 
die.  Robins  made  one  last  kick  for  life,  and  struggling 
through  the  snow-drifts  came  across  a  cross  glistening 
white  even  through  the  snow  flakes.  That  cross  again — 
that  symbol  of  self-sacrifice  !  Just  past  it  he  discovered  an 
Indian  village  with  shelter  for  himself  and  his  comrade. 
They  went  on  to  the  Klondike,  where  Robins  struck  pay- 
gravel  in  his  “claim  ”  and  returned  with  an  independency 
for  life.  Chicago  attracted  him  as  a  city  that  would  offer 
him  a  good  time.  There  he  came  into  intimate  contact 
with  a  Congregational  minister  slaving  in  a  slum.  Again 
the  Cross !  This  third  time  Raymond  Robins  yielded  to 

K  I5I 


152 


The  Best  I  Remember 


its  spell,  and  ever  since  he  has  lived  his  life  to  serve  the 
underdog.  At  Boston  this  life-story  was  the  background 
of  his  speech.  He  repudiated  Bolshevism  and  Socialism — 
the  one  as  hateful,  the  other  as  alien  to  man’s  nature.  But 
he  denounced  human  exploitation  and  pleaded  for  all  in¬ 
dustry  to  be  elevated  into  public  service.  The  audience 
rose  to  him — he  held  them  for  over  an  hour  in  the  hollow 
I  of  his  hand.  But  on  the  platform  an  ex-chairman  of  the 
*  Congregational  Union  of  England  and  Wales  sat  ostentati- 
’  ously  showing  his  contempt  for  such  idealism,  and  another 
ex-chairman  of  the  same  Union  barely  concealed  his  bore¬ 
dom.  Afterwards  I  found  that  almost  to  a  man  the  Con¬ 
gregational  laymen  dismissed  the  speech  as  si^versive  of 
I  the  social  order,  while  the  older  Congregational  ministers, 

‘  satisfied  that  Jesus  has  nothing  to  say  on  economics,  dis- 
i  missed  the  utterance  as  impracticable.  But  with  scarcely 
^  an  exception  the  younger  ministers  recognized  an  authentic 
note  of  prophecy  in  Raymond  Robins’s  assertion  that  when 
property  rights  cut  across  human  rights,  property  rights 
must  yield. 

Dr.  George  A.  Gordon,  of  New  Old  South  Congrega¬ 
tional  Church,  Boston — the  most  influential  pulpit  in  New 
England — bears  a  strange  facial  resemblance  to  the  late  Dr. 
John  Watson  (“Ian  Maclaren  ”).  I  was  introduced  to  Dr. 
Gordon  when  I  was  in  Boston  in  1920  by  a  Scottish 
Divinity  professor  who  was  a  student  at  Mansfield  College, 
Oxford,  when  Dr.  Gordon  lectured  there  about  fifteen  years 
ago.  There  was  much  curiosity  among  the  Mansfield 
students  as  to  when  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ  would  be  first 
mentioned  by  Dr.  Gordon.  The  first,  second,  and  third 
lecture  went  by,  and  still  the  sacred  name  went  unnamed. 
In  the  fourth  lecture  Dr.  Gordon  referred  to  Jesus,  and  the 
impious  Mansfield  students  welcomed  it  with  a  cheer.  Dr. 
Gordon  is  commemorated  by  F.  G.  Peabody  who  dedicates 
one  of  his  books  to  the  Boston  preacher  with  the  lines : 


America  and  American  Humour  153 

“  Still  at  your  post  you  stand,  high  in  the  lighthouse  tower, 
Guarding  the  way  of  life,  speaking  the  word  of  power ; 
Resolute,  tender,  wise,  full  of  the  love  of  truth. 

Tending  the  flame  of  Christ  as  it  marks  the  channel  of  youth.” 

Dr.  Gordon  undertook  to  read  a  paper  on  the 
Originality  of  Jesus  before  the  International  Congrega¬ 
tional  Council  at  Boston  (1920),  but  he  sold  it  beforehand 
as  an  article  to  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  and  the  delegates 
were  able  to  read  it  before  Dr.  Gordon  delivered  it.  With 
a  copy  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly  in  my  hands  I  followed  Dr. 
Gordon’s  reading  of  his  paper,  watching  his  variations  and 
correcting  them  in  pencil.  It  was  one  of  the  outstanding 
utterances  of  the  Boston  Council ;  but  somehow  its  prema¬ 
ture  publication  robbed  it  of  eclat. 

New  Old  South  Church  had  been  seeking  a  minister 
for  some  time  when  the  name  of  a  young  preacher,  some¬ 
where  up  state,  was  mentioned — this  was  in  1884 — as  a 
possible  minister.  George  A.  Gordon — for  it  was  he — 
agreed  to  preach  “with  a  view,”  and  the  widow  of  the 
previous  minister  of  Old  South,  who  made  it  her  duty  to 
make  every  minister  who  preached  there  feel  at  home,  sent 
her  daughter  to  meet  him  at  the  station  and  to  convoy  him 
to  his  host’s  house.  Naturally  she  was  eager  to  hear  all 
about  the  young  preacher  candidate,  and  when  her 
daughter  got  back  from  welcoming  the  visitor  the  mother 
asked  :  “What  is  he  like?  ”  The  daughter  threw  up  her 
hands:  “Oh,  mother,”  she  replied,  “he’s  a  regular 
micky  ” — (a  New  England  equivalent  for  our  word  hobble- 
de-hoy).  But  uncouth  appearance  notwithstanding,  George 
A.  Gordon  was  invited  to  New  Old  South,  and  accepted  the 
invitation.  In  due  course,  too,  the  young  lady  who  had 
called  him  a  “micky  ”  became  Mrs.  George  Gordon. 

The  city  of  Washington  is  “a  dream  in  marble”;  but 
I  confess  that  the  spots  which  stir  my  deepest  emotions 
in  the  American  capital  are  the  ramshackle  theatre  where 


154 


The  Best  I  Remember 


Abraham  Lincoln  was  shot  on  that  Good  Friday  evening 
in  1864,  and  the  shabby  little  house  opposite  where  he  was 
carried  to  die.  To  stand  in  the  corner  of  the  back  bedroom 
exactly  upon  the  spot  where  the  bed  stood  when  Lincoln 
drew  his  last  breath  moved  me  more  even  than  standing 
on  Plymouth  Rock.  The  tremendous  humanity  of  Lincoln 
lifts  him  into  a  category  of  his  own.  Concerning  Lincoln, 
my  friend  Dr.  Lynn  Harold  Hough  recently  told  me  a 
characteristic  story  that  was  quite  new  to  me.  When  he 
was  President,  living  at  the  White  House,  Lincoln  was 
accessible  to  anybody  who  called.  One  day  a  big  Yankee 
from  the  north  walked  into  Lincoln’s  room,  shook  the 
President  warmly  by  the  hand,  and  said:  “Mr.  Lincoln, 
up  in  Illinois,  where  I  come  from,  we  trust  nobody  but 
God  and  Abraham  Lincoln.”  Honest  Abe  smiled  and  his 
eyes  twinkled,  and  then  he  slowly  drawled:  “Yes,  and  I 
guess  you  are  just  about  half  right.” 

The  inscription,  “In  God  we  trust,”  on  American  coins 
may  possibly  explain  the  curious  profanity  that  strikes 
an  Englishman  in  the  United  States.  When  it  gets 
adopted  for  use  as  a  business-house  motto  :  “In  God  we 
trust;  all  others  pay  spot  cash,”  an  Englishman  sustains  a 
moral  jerk.  Americans  are  a  phrase-ridden  people;  but 
some  of  their  catch-words  stick  pleasantly  in  one’s  memory. 
“Say  it  in  Flowers  ”  in  a  Boston  florist’s  window  is  de¬ 
lightful.  And  the  notice  on  Boston  Common  warning 
people  off  the  grass  is  distinctly  double-barrelled.  “  Keep 
off  !  If  you  want  to  roam  join  the  navy.”  I  link  this  with 
the  old  man,  who,  at  a  missionary  meeting,  made  a  special 
petition  for  medical  missions  “which,  oh.  Lord,  so  to 
speak,  kill  two  birds  with  one  stone.” 

In  New  York,  so  the  story  goes,  a  group  of  men  were 
discussing  who  was  the  greatest  man  that  had  ever  lived. 
Caesar,  Homer,  Alexander,  Napoleon,  Lincoln — all  the 


America  and  American  Humour  155 

great  world  heroes  were  mentioned  and  canvassed.  Then 
someone  suggested  the  name  of  Jesus,  and  in  the  silence 
that  fell  unanimity  seemed  certain,  when  a  Jew  broke  in 
with  the  remark:  “Yes,  but  the  fellow  who  invented 
interest  was  no  fool.^’ 

The  brightest  American  story  I  gleaned  in  the  United 
States  was  about  a  man  who  was  promised  a  day’s  shooting 
and  boasted  beforehand  of  what  a  good  time  he  would  have. 
A  friend  met  him  as  he  returned  from  his  day  out  and 
asked:  “Have  you  had  a  good  day?”  “Naw!”  he 
answered  grumpily.  “No  sport?  ”  “Naw  !  ”  “Didn’t 
you  shoot  anything?  ”  “I  shot  my  dog!  ”  “Shot  your 
dog — ^was  he  mad?”  “Well,  you  may  bet  he  wasn’t  so 
‘darned  pleased !  ” 

Prophets  who  foretell  the  end  of  the  world  easily  find 
people  ready  to  believe  them  in  the  land  of  fancy  religions. 
One  Missouri  prophet  with  a  large  following  announced 
the  exact  hour  of  the  day  when  the  world  would  end.  He 
fixed  four  o’clock  on  a  September  morning.  The  farming 
folk  accepted  his  prophecy  as  inspired  and  made  prepara¬ 
tions  for  “the  day.”  Dressed  in  their  best  they  rose  early 
to  await  the  event.  One  old  couple,  a  farmer  and  his  wife, 
dressed  in  their  best  night  clothes,  climbed  on  the  roof  of 
their  house.  Just  as  they  reached  the  highest  gable  a  corn- 
stack  that  had  been  smouldering  burst  into  flames  on  the 
horizon  line.  Jonathan  looked  gravely  at  his  old  wife. 
“’Ria,”  he  said,  “our  luck’s  out  again.” 

There  died  a  few  years  ago  a  Baptist  minister.  Rev. 
Robert  Burdette,  who  was  highly  esteemed  in  Boston  as 
a  preacher,  but  known  all  over  the  United  States  as  Bob 
Burdette,  the  popular  humorous  lecturer.  He  often  told 
stories  against  himself,  but  his  pet  story  was  one  where 
he  scored  by  his  wit.  Into  his  vestry  at  Tremont  Temple 


The  Best  I  Remember 


156 

there  came  one  day  a  lady,  a  leader  of  the  spiritualist  move¬ 
ment  in  Boston.  Her  husband,  she  told  Dr.  Burdette, 
had  died  suddenly  on  the  previous  day,  and  had 
expressed  a  dying  wish  that  Dr.  Burdette  should  con¬ 
duct  his  funeral.  “But  your  husband  was  a  spiritualist; 
would  it  be  more  in  keeping  with  his  beliefs  if  you  had 
a  spiritualist  to  officiate  at  his  funeral  ?  ”  he  asked.  “  It 
was  his  last  wish  that  you  should  do  so  !  ”  the  lady  per¬ 
sisted,  and  Dr.  Burdette,  feeling  he  could  do  no  other, 
complied.  The  funeral  service  was  in  the  lady’s  drawing¬ 
room,  and  the  coffin,  buried  in  flowers,  stood  on  a  bier  in 
the  room.  Dr.  Burdette  went  through  the  burial  service 
and  gave  a  short  address,  referring  in  terms  of  Christian 
faith  to  the  happy  life  of  the  dear  departed  brother  in  the 
world  beyond  the  grave.  When  he  sat  down  the  widow 
jumped  up  and  told  the  assembled  company  that  while 
Dr.  Burdette  had  been  speaking  she  had  been  in  spiritual¬ 
istic  communion  with  her  dead  husband,  who  assured  her 
that  Dr.  Burdette’s  picture  of  the  after-life  was  wholly 
fictitious.  When  the  lady  had  finished  Dr.  Burdette  rose 
and  quietly  replied  that  he  had  been  a  Christian  minister 
for  nearly  forty  years,  and  in  the  course  of  his  ministry 
had  delivered  over  two  thousand  funeral  addresses. 
“But,”  he  added,  “this  is  the  first  time  in  all  my  long 
experience  that  I  have  ever  had  any  back-chat  from  the 
corpse.” 

Dr.  Burdette  had  had  the  misfortune  to  lose  an  eye, 
and  he  wore  an  artificial  one.  Two  pious  ladies  in  his 
congregation  were  concerned  about  their  pastor’s  infirmity, 
and  one  day  they  told  him  that  they  had  been  praying 
regularly  for  a  long  time  that  the  Lord,  if  it  pleased  Him, 
should  restore  Dr.  Burdette’s  lost  eve.  Dr.  Burdette  was 
deeply  touched  by  their  solicitude  as  well  as  by  their  faith. 
It  was  so  kind  of  them,  he  said,  to  take  such  concern  over 
his  eye.  Then  the  irrepressible  humorist  broke  out,  “  But,” 
he  said  with  a  twinkle  in  his  sound  eye,  “don’t  you  think, 


America  and  American  Humour  157 


my  dear  ladies,  that  while  you  are  praying  about  my 
artificial  eye  you  might  pray  also  about  your  own  false 
teeth  ?  ” 

Canon  Ainger,  who  was  master  of  the  Temple  when  I 
came  to  London,  and  to  whom  I  was  irresistibly  drawn  by 
his  devotion  to  Charles  Lamb,  told  a  story  of  an  old  lady 
who  went  to  consult  her  minister.  She  had  lost  nearly  all 
her  teeth,  and  was  gravely  disturbed  as  to  whether  it  was 
right  for  a  pious  woman  to  wear  false  teeth.  “It  will  be^ 
all  the  easier  for  you  to  swallow  the  camel  if  you  don’t,” 
the  minister  answered.  Canon  Ainger  looked  more  like  a 
seraph  than  anyone  I  have  ever  seen.  He  had  wonderful 
eyes — like  James  Russell  Lowell,  whom  a  waiting-maid 
once  described  “as  a  gentleman  with  the  coaxingest  eyes 
in  all  the  world.”  There  was  an  ethereality  about  Canon 
Ainger  that  made  one  think  of  the  mediaeval  saints. 


CHAPTER  XXV 


A  SATIRIST  IN  THE  PULPIT 

SIDNEY  SMITH  can  hardly  have  been  more  sardonic  in 
the  pulpit — more  caustic  in  his  wit,  or  mordant  in  his 
humour  than  Dr.  W.  L.  Watkinson,  the  veteran  Wesleyan 
Methodist  preacher.  He  was  once  described  as  a  converted 
Heine.  Dr.  Watkinson  has  one  odd  characteristic— a 
triumphant  sniff  with  which  he  punctuates  his  remarks  and 
draws  attention  to  any  witticism  that  might  be  possibly 
overlooked.  He  has  had  many  imitators  in  his  own  and 
other  denominations,  but,  he  used  to  say,  “they  can’t 
imitate  my  sniffs.”  Exceedingly  tall,  even  to  the  point  of 
attenuation,  he  cuts  a  rather  droll  figure  in  the  pulpit. 
“They  say,  the  exponents  of  heredity  say,  that  we  carry 
our  ancestors  about  with  us  just  as  if  we  were  omnibuses,” 
he  observed  one  day.  Then,  stroking  his  lean  sides,  he 
added  dryly,  “If  it’s  true.  I’m  sorry  for  my  ancestors. 
They  must  be  riding  on  the  knife-board.”  Dr.  Watkinson 
reads  everything,  especially  in  natural  science,  and  he  used 
to  enrich  his  sermons  with  illustrations  from  botany,  geo- 
logy,  astronomy,  zoology  and  every  other  ’ology.  Yet 
rather  inconsistently  his  sharpest  barbs  were  directed  at 
the  dogmatism  of  the  scientists.  In  private  Dr.  Watkinson 
is  the  gentlest  of  men — a  Tory  to  the  core  in  politics  and 
theology,  but  the  politest  of  listeners  to  even  radical  views 
of  both.  In  conversation  his  verbal  fencing  is  delightful, 
and  he  has  sufficiently  fine  a  sense  of  humour  to  appreciate 
a  joke  against  himself.  As  he  scores  off  others,  he  never 
resents  being  scored  off.  When  Mr.  Hugh  Price  Hughes 
was  campaigning  for  Methodist  reunion  he  moved  a  reso- 

158 


159 


A  Satirist  in  the  Pulpit 

lution  in  the  Wesleyan  Conference  on  the  subject,  and 
by  the  magic  of  his  fiery  eloquence  convinced  the  confer¬ 
ence  that  from  all  over  England  a  clamant  cry  for  union 
was  rising.  The  conference  was  about  to  vote  when  Dr. 
Watkinson  rose,  not  to  make  a  speech,  as  he  explained, 
but  to  tell  a  story  of  his  mother  taking  him  as  a  small  boy 
to  a  ventriloquial  entertainment  in  a  county  town  hall.  . 
“In  the  middle  of  the  entertainment  there  was  a  loud 
knocking  on  the  hall  door.  It  was  terrible.  It  seemed  as 
if  a  mob  was  trying  to  break  into  the  hall.  We  thought 
there  was  a  riot  outside,  and  we  stood  up  in  a  fever  of 
anxiety.  But  there  wasn’t  any  riot.  It  was  only  the 
ventriloquist.”  Dr.  Watkinson  sat  down,  and  the  confer¬ 
ence  seizing  the  point  rocked  with  laughter.  The  Price 
Hughes  resolution  was  promptly  shelved.  Mr.  Price 
Hughes  was  furious,  and  it  was  long  before  he  forgave 
Dr.  Watkinson. 

Time  brought  Mr.  Price  Hughes  an  opportunity  for  re¬ 
venge.  “How  is  it,”  someone  asked  him,  “that  Dr. 
Watkinson  is  such  a  popular  preacher  in  the  country  but 
never  succeeds  in  his  own  circuit  ?  ”  Mr.  Price  Hughes’s 
eyes  twinkled — his  chance  had  come.  “Well,”  he  said 
tartly,  “  I  suppose  everybody  enjoys  caper  sauce  when  they 
eat  boiled  mutton,  but  who  could  live  on  a  diet  of  nothing 
but  caper  sauce  ?  ”  During  a  dangerous  illness  the  rumour 
reached  a  newspaper  office  that  Dr.  Watkinson  was  dying. 
“He’ll  greet  the  unseen  with  a  jeer,  no  doubt,”  a  satirist 
remarked  with  Watkinsonian  savagery. 

Dr.  Watkinson’s  wit  spared  no  one.  “My  wife  and  I 
celebrated  our  thirty-ninth  wedding  day  last  week,”  he  once 
told  a  meeting.  “I  said  to  Mrs.  Watkinson,  '  My  dear, 
if  I  had  to  preach  to-day  there  is  only  one  text  I  could 
take — Paul’s  words  :  “Forty  stripes  have  I  save  one.”  ’  ” 

On  one  of  his  preaching  engagements  he  was  enter¬ 
tained  by  an  ostentatious  parvenu  who  showed  his  guest 
with  pride  over  his  grounds.  “I’ve  cut  a  new  carriage 


i6o 


The  Best  I  Remember 


drive,”  he  said,  “and  planted  trees  to  make  an  avenue. 
They’re  elms;  they’ll  never  be  any  benefit  to  me — 
they  grow  too  slowly.  But  I’ve  planted  them  for  my 
posteriors.”  Dr.  Watkinson  sniffed  ominously.  “Wouldn’t 
birches  have  been  better?  ”  he  asked  dryly. 

To  a  host  who  smilingly  chided  him  for  getting  up 
late  by  saying  that  he  was  a  bad  pupil  of  John  Wesley, 
whose  habit  it  was  to  be  up  and  in  his  study  by  5  A.M., 
Dr.  Watkinson  promptly  retorted:  “Yes,  and  if  I  had 
been  married  to  Mrs.  John  Wesley  I  should  have  been  in 
my  study  by  four  o’clock  in  the  mornings.” 

When  the  first  Oecumenical  Conference  was  held  Dr. 
Watkinson  was  elected  its  president.  Hugh  Price  Hughes 
asked  petulantly;  “What  is  the  good  of  electing  a  man 
with  one  foot  in  the  grave?  ”  Someone  told  Dr.  Watkin¬ 
son.  “Ah,”  he  said  with  his  characteristic  sniff.  “It’s 
the  other  foot  he  is  afraid  of.” 

A  Wesleyan  Baronet  was  talking,  in  a  group  of  Metho¬ 
dists,  about  his  old  school.  He  could  not  say  much  in 
praise  of  it.  “Why,  do  you  know,”  he  said  indignantly, 
“  I  was  punished  there  once  for  telling  the  truth  ?  ”  “Well, 
it  cured  you,”  retorted  Dr.  Watkinson  in  his  driest  tone. 

In  Rome  Dr.  Watkinson  shocked  the  curator  of  the 
fowls  whose  descent  is  traced  direct  from  the  cock  that 
crowed  when  Peter  made  the  great  betrayal,  by  asking  in 
the  most  matter-of-fact  tone  :  “Now  just  tell  me  one  thing 
— do  those  hens  lay  ?  ”  The  curator  only  just  managed  to 
ward  off  a  fainting  fit  at  such  appalling  irreverence  to  the 
sacred  birds. 

Travelling  across  France  Dr.  Watkinson  found  himself 
alone  in  a  railway  carriage  with  a  Roman  Catholic  priest, 
who  opened  conversation.  The  story  goes  that  the  con¬ 
versation  went  thus  : 

R.C.  Priest :  “Are  you  a  priest?  ” 

Dr.  Watkinson  ;  “No;  a  minister  !  ” 

R.C.  Priest:  “What  denomination?” 


A  Satirist  in  the  Pulpit  i6i 

Dr.  Watkinson  :  “The  Wesleyan  Methodist  Church  !  ” 
R.C.  Priest :  “Are  you  married?  ” 

Dr.  Watkinson  :  “Yes!  ” 

R.C.  Priest:  “Have  you  any  children?” 

Dr.  Watkinson  :  “Yes!  ” 

The  conversation  lapsed  for  a  few  minutes.  Then  the 
initiative  came  from  Dr.  Watkinson  : 

Dr.  Watkinson  :  “Are  you  a  minister?  ” 

R.C.  Priest  (haughtily)  :  “No;  a  priest !  ” 

Dr.  Watkinson  :  “What  denomination?  ” 

R.C.  Priest  (in  a  shocked  tone)  :  “The  Holy  Roman 
Catholic  Church.” 

Dr.  Watkinson  :  “Are  you  married?  ” 

R.C.  Priest  (aghast)  :  “No  !  No  !  !  ” 

Dr.  Watkinson  :  “Have  you  any  children?  ” 

R.C.  Priest  (horrified)  :  “No!  No!  !  No  !  I  I  ” 

The  rest  of  the  journey  passed  in  silence. 

One  day,  just  before  the  war,  I  met  Dr.  Watkinson 
walking  lazily  along  Fleet  Street.  I  stopped  him  to  in¬ 
quire  about  his  health.  He  had  been  revelling  in 
Nietzsche,  he  told  me.  “Can  you  read  him  with  pati¬ 
ence?”  I  asked.  “I  read  him  with  delight,”  he  said. 
“He’s  a  perfect  tonic  to  me.  He  challenges  everything 
I  believe  and  live  by.  Why,  Nietzsche  has  made  me  go 
over  all  my  fundamentals  and  make  sure  that  my  feet  of 
faith  are  on  rock,  not  sand.” 

In  his  “Fearnley  Lecture,”  one  of  his  best  known  books. 
Dr.  Watkinson  paused  in  his  argument  to  slash  fiercely  at 
George  Eliot  for  her  liaison  with  George  Henry  Lewes. 
He  referred  with  pity  to  “the  poor  injured  wife  ”  in  the 
background.  Partially  at  my  suggestion  a  cousin  of 
George  Eliot,  the  Rev.  William  Mottram,  a  deeply  re¬ 
spected  Congregational  minister,  published  a  little  book  in 
which,  with  indisputable  facts  to  corroborate  him,  he  de¬ 
fended  George  Eliot’s  character  against  her  maligners. 
Then  came  the  death  of  Mrs.  Lewes  which  loosed  the  lips 


i62 


The  Best  I  Remember 


of  others  who  knew  the  true  story  of  Lewes  and  George 
Eliot.  The  “injured  wife  ”  of  Dr.  Watkinson’s  “Fearnley 
Lecture  ”  was  shown  to  be  a  fickle  woman  who  had  twice 
run  away  with  Thornton  Hunt.  George  Henry  Lewes, 
who  had  forgiven  her  infidelity  on  the  first  occasion,  finally 
broke  with  her. 

It  was  before  the  institution  of  the  divorce  court,  and 
Lewes  could  get  no  release  from  his  unfaithful  wife  save 
by  an  Act  of  Parliament,  only  to  be  secured  at  a  prohibi¬ 
tive  price.  Had  he  lived  twenty  years  later  Lewes  could 
have  gone  to  the  divorce  court,  got  a  decree  nisi  dissolving 
his  first  marriage,  and  then,  after  a  short  interval,  might 
have  legally  married  George  Eliot.  Meanwhile  he  was 
left  with  two  boys,  deserted  by  their  mother.  To  these 
boys  George  Eliot  behaved  as  a  mother.  She  cared  for 
them  and  paid  for  their  education.  Moreover,  she  made 
financial  provision  for  Mrs.  Lewes,  and  that  lady  lived  to 
the  end  of  her  life  upon  George  Eliot’s  bounty.  When 
these  facts  were  made  public  I  drew  Dr.  Watkinson’s  at¬ 
tention  to  them,  and  respectfully  suggested  that  the  harsh 
passage  about  George  Eliot  should  be  deleted  from  the 
“Fearnley  Lecture.”  Dr.  Watkinson  accepted  the  sugges¬ 
tion  with  a  readiness  that  showed  his  desire  to  be  just, 
even  to  the  memory  of  a  woman  he  disliked.  He  at  once 
wrote  to  the  publishers  of  the  “  Fearnley  Lecture  ”  asking 
that  no  further  copies  should  be  printed  from  the  old 
plates. 

Another  of  Dr.  Watkinson’s  bon  mots  occurs  to  me  : 
“I  heard  the  other  day,”  he  said  once  in  a  platform  speech, 
“that  a  house  had  fallen  down  at  Ealing.  Of  course  it 
fell  down.  It  was  a  new  house.  It  hadn’t  been  papered. 
There  was  nothing  to  hold  it  together.” 

Listening  to  Dr.  Watkinson  was  always  a  novel  ex¬ 
perience  because  one  was  always  trembling  on  the  verge 
of  the  unexpected.  Some  of  his  obiter  dicta  deserve 
preservation — e.g. : 


i63 


A  Satirist  in  the  Pulpit 

“The  Bible  is  the  radium  of  the  moral  world.” 

“The  frail  snowflake  has  sculptured  continents.” 

“The  religion  that  costs  nothing  is  worth  exactly  what 
it  costs.” 

“We  estimate  ourselves  in  our  Sunday  clothes;  our 
neighbours  reckon  us  up  in  our  shirtsleeves.” 

“Sincerity  is  a  synonym  for  safety.” 

Dr.  Watkinson’s  appearances  in  the  pulpit  have  grown 
fewer  and  fewer  as  the  years  creep  on — he  is  now  eighty- 
four — but  his  mind  is  as  fresh  and  vivid  as  ever,  and  his 
wit  never  fails. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 


A  MISCELLANY  OF  MEMORIES 

During  my  first  two  years  in  London  I  had — as  I  was 
engaged  on  a  daily  newspaper — ^^to  work  in  Fleet  Street 
on  Sunday  evenings.  There  was  seldom  much  work  to  be 
done,  however,  and  I  frequently  went  across  to  Newton 
Hall,  off  Fetter  Lane,  to  hear  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison 
lecture  to  the  Positivists.  His  audience  was  small  as  a 
rule,  and  of  a  pronounced  highbrow  type ;  and  the 
atmosphere  of  the  dingy  little  hall  was  peculiarly  cold 
and  forbidding.  Mr.  Harrison’s  passion  for  humanity 
was  very  attractive  to  me,  and  he  opened  windows  of  the 
mind  by  his  comprehensive  sweep  over  things  said  and 
done  in  history.  I  discovered  the  existence  of  these 
Positivist  meetings  in  a  curious  way,  for  they  were  never 
advertised  generally.  One  Sunday,  in  my  early  months 
in  London,  an  event  happened  upon  which  it  was  neces¬ 
sary  that  my  paper,  the  Manchester  Examiner,  should  have 
a  special  article  in  Monday’s  issue.  The  man  who  had  all 
the  facts  about  the  matter  was  a  Mr.  Goat  by,  who  lived 
somewhere  at  Kensington.  I  was  sent  off  to  his  home 
bearing  a  letter  inviting  him  either  to  come  into  Fleet 
Street  and  write  the  article  or  to  dictate  it  to  me  on  the 
Spot.  Mr.  Goatby,  I  found,  was  not  at  home,  but  I  was 
told  that  he  had  gone  to  Newton  Hall  to  hear  Mr. 
Frederic  Harrison.  I  went  on  to  Newton  Hall,  but  as  I 
did  not  know  Mr.  Goatby  by  sight,  I  was  in  difficulties. 
The  attendant  at  Newton  Hall  did  not  know  Mr.  Goatby 
either,  but  he  found  a  way  out.  He  walked  up  to  the 
platform  just  as  Mr.  Llarrison  was  finishing  his  discourse 

164 


A  Miscellany  of  Memories  165 

and  explained  that  a  young  man  was  seeking  Mr.  Goatby. 
Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  announced  this  fact  to  the  audience 
— and  did  it,  too,  in  a  most  kindly  way — with  the  result 
that  I  found  my  man,  convoyed  him  across  to  the  office 
in  Fleet  Street,  where  he  wrote  the  article,  which  was  sent 
over  the  private  wire  and  duly  appeared  in  the  Manchester 
Examiner  next  day.  I  remember  being  congratulated  by 
my  editor  for  my  pertinacious  pursuit  of  my  quarry. 
“You’ll  get  there,  my  boy,”  he  said,  and  the  praise  was 
fragrant  to  me.  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison’s  little  act  of 
kindness  won  him  a  youthful  admirer,  and  whenever  I 
have  heard  him  speak,  or  read  anything  he  has  written, 
my  attitude  has  ever  since  been  coloured  by  this  recollection 
of  my  first  and  only  encounter  with  him. 

An  event  that  stands  out  in  my  memory  very  vividly, 
though  it  is  thirty  years  ago,  was  the  funeral  of  Charles 
Bradlaugh.  The  burial  took  place  at  Brookwood  Necro¬ 
polis,  near  Woking.  An  immense  concourse  of  people 
gathered  in  the  cemetery.  What  drove  the  occasion  deeply 
into  my  memory  was  the  total  absence  of  religious  cere¬ 
mony.  No  prayer  was  said  at  the  grave.  Indeed,  not  a 
single  word  was  uttered.  The  remains,  placed  in  a  light 
coffin,  were  lowered  into  the  earth  in  a  quite  unceremonious 
fashion — as  if  carrion  were  being  hustled  out  of  sight — 
and  then,  one  by  one,  the  spectators  filed  past  the  open 
grave,  and,  picking  up  a  handful  of  earth,  threw  it  upon 
the  casket.  Many  of  the  men  put  pebbles  and  little  clods 
of  earth  from  the  graveside  in  their  pockets,  evidently  to 
preserve  them  as  souvenirs.  Although  the  deep  emotion 
of  the  multitude  of  mourners  was  impressive,  I  shuddered 
all  over  my  being  at  the  stark  materialism  of  such  a  funeral. 
Bradlaugh  was  an  avowed  and  militant  atheist,  and  any 
religious  ceremony  would  perhaps  have  been  the  apotheosis 
of  unreality  at  his  interment;  but  I  came  away  heart-frozen. 
It  only  then  dawned  on  me  that  loss  of  faith  in  the  con- 


i66 


The  Best  I  Remember 


tinuity  of  human  personality  after  death  gives  death  an 
appalling  victory. 

Journalists  who  move  close  to  what  George  Meredith 
calls  “the  very  furnace-hissing  ”  of  events  almost  lose  the 
capacity  to  experience  a  real  thrill.  But  I  imagine  that  no 
journalist  has  “soul  so  dead”  that  he  can  see  a  big  ship 
launched  without  just  a  fluttering  of  his  heartstrings.  Cer¬ 
tainly  I  never  felt  the  tension  of  a  crucial  moment  so 
acutely  as  when  I  watched  the  Britannic  (twin  ship  to  the 
Titanic  and  the  Olympic)  leave  the  slips  in  Harland  and 
Wolff’s  yard  at  Belfast.  Even  the  shipbuilders  themselves 
are  not  immune  from  the  quivering  excitement  of  that 
drear,  everlasting  moment  when  the  props  have  been 
knocked  from  under  the  hull  and  a  soft  whistle  announces 
to  the  assembled  crowd  that  the  ship  is  free  at  last  to  leave 
the  slips.  The  silence  is  so  heavy  that  literally  one  hears 
the  breathing  of  one’s  neighbours.  “Will  she  go?” 
The  question  flashes  through  every  brain.  Anxiety  is 
tense.  A  second  passes,  two,  three,  perhaps  four;  and 
still  the  great  ship,  towering  high  in  the  air,  stands  poised 
and  motionless.  Then  the  yard  hands  raise  a  cheer. 
Quick  to  detect  the  first  faint  movement,  their  eager  eyes 
have  observed  what  to  others  is  an  imperceptible  stirring 
of  the  dead  weight.  Two  seconds  more  and  the  unprac¬ 
tised  eyes  of  the  spectators — the  guests  of  the  launching — 
catch  the  movement.  Then  the  .mighty  hull  begins  to 
glide  with  ever  accelerating  speed^down  the  greased  ways 
till,  like  a  rushing  wind,  she  speeds  down  the  slips.  Her 
bows  cleave  the  waters  amid  a  roar  of  cheering,  renewed 
again  as  she  is  pulled  up  within  an  incredibly  small  dis¬ 
tance  by  the  drag  chains.  With  the  excitement  still  tense, 
an  official  of  the  shipyard  goes  through  the  quaint  ritual 
of  fixing  up  the  number  of  the  next  ship  to  be  built  in  the 
slip  from  which  the  leviathan  has  just  been  released.  A 
launch,  especially  of  a  great  liner,  is  a  spectacle  that  never 


A  Miscellany  of  Memories  167 

stales,  and  those  seconds  of  uncertainty  afford  a  sensation 
of  a  lifetime. 

The  old  custom  of  christening  a  ship  with  a  bottle  of 
wine  and  asking  for  the  blessing  of  God  upon  her  through 
the  prayers  of  a  clergyman  has  been  abandoned  by  Messrs. 

.  Harland  and  Wolff. 

“No'j  sir,”  said  an  old  shipbuilder  in  the  Belfast  yard, 
“we  don’t  make  any  fuss  of  that  sort  now  over  a  new  ship. 
We  just  builds  her  and  shoves  her  in.” 

I  confess  I  felt,  as  I  saw  the  Britannic  take  the  water, 
that  the  omission  of  any  religious  ceremony  smacked  un¬ 
necessarily  of  defiance  of  the  old  dependence  on  Providence 
of  those  who  go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships  and  do  business 
in  great  waters.  Seamen  are,  I  find,  almost  invariably 
men  with  a  simple  religious  faith,  conscious  that  their 
ways  are  overruled  by  the  Divinity  that  shapes  our  ends. 
They  may  not,  like  so  many  soldiers,  be  sternly  orthodox 
in  their  religious  views — I  think  military  men  worry  them¬ 
selves  more  over  Daniel  and  the  mystic  numerals  in  Reve¬ 
lation  than  any  other  class — but  the  sailorman  is  rarely 
agnostic,  and  seldom  without  a  working  religion  of  his 
own.  If  the  crews  of  ocean  liners  were  allowed  a  ballot 
on  the  point,  I  am  confident  an  overwhelming  majority 
would  vote  for  ships  to  be  launched  with  some  religious 
ceremonial. 

Generally  speaking,  the  big  sensations  that  one  expects 
to  thrill  are  disappointing.  Oscar  Wilde  told  the  New 
York  reporters  who  interviewed  him  on  the  liner  that  he 
had  been  disappointed  in  the  Atlantic  Ocean.  That  was 
the  hyperbole  of  a  poseur,  of  course,  but  I  confess  that 
my  first  impressions  of  Niagara  fell  far  below  my  own 
anticipations.  A  second  and  third  visit  wiped  out  my 
initial  disappointment,  it  is  true.  Again,  shooting  the 
Lachine  Rapids  on  the  St.  Lawrence  struck  me  as  miser¬ 
ably  tame,  nor  was  my  first  journey  on  a  mountain  railway 

L 


i68 


The  Best  I  Remember 


in  the  Alps  half  so  breathless  as  I  had  expected.  Seeing 
my  first  iceberg — there  were  eleven  of  them  as  we  emerged 
after  three  days  in  a  fog  off  the  Banks  of  Newfoundland 
in  1894 — uncanny  experience  without  a  redeeming 
touch  of  poetry.  The  midnight  sun  in  Norway  is  a  bit  of 
a  bore,  and  the  aurora  borealis  off  Labrador  is  not  so  im¬ 
pressive  as  a  summer  fire  on  a  hillside  common  in  England. 
The  really  unforgettable  thrills  are  the  first  glimpse  of 
*  one’s  first  baby,  the  first  kindly  review  of  one’s  first  book, 
holing  a  very  long  putt  on  a  golf  green,  digging  the  very 
first  potatoes  one  has  ever  grown — all  simple,  homely, 
commonplace  episodes  in  life,  but  all,  somehow,  tinged 
with  sacramental  felicity. 

Whenever  Sir  Henry  Irving  started  for  one  of  his 
provincial  tours  he  always  played  for  a  week  at  the  Grand 
Theatre  at  Islington.  On  the  last  night  of  one  of  these 
short  sojourns  at  Islington — I  think  it  was  in  1890 — I  was 
sent  tO'  report  Irving’s  speech  on  his  recall  before  the  cur¬ 
tain.  Mr.  Bram  Stoker,  who  was  Irving’s  manager,  made 
me  welcome  when  I  had  presented  a  letter  of  introduction, 
and  after  the  speech  he  took  me  to  the  great  Shakespearean 
actor’s  dressing-room.  Irving,  it  seemed,  preferred  to 
have  his  speeches  printed  as  he  had  written  them  rather 
than  as  he  had  spoken  them.  It  had  been  a  speech  with 
an  autobiographical  flavour,  recalling  how  as  a  lad  he  had 
fought  his  way  into  Sadlers  Wells  Theatre  to  see  Samuel 
Phelps  play  Shakespeare.  From  Phelps  he  had  (he  said) 
caught  his  enthusiasm  for  Shakespeare.  Irving  was  ex¬ 
tremely  gracious  to  me,  and  gave  me  his  manuscript  of 
the  speech,  adding  :  “You  will  send  it  me  back.” 

“I  hope  you  don’t  insist  on  that,”  I  replied.  “I  should 
like  to  keep  it  among  my  treasures.” 

“As  you  will,  as  you  will,  my  young  friend,”  Irving 
answered  in  his  stateliest  manner.  “You  are  welcome 
indeed  to  it  if  retaining  it  will  give  you  any  pleasure.” 


A  Miscellany  of  Memories  169 

Very  different  was  Dean  Farrar’s  treatment  about  the 
same  time  of  a  young  journalist  I  knew  who  asked  leave 
to  borrow  his  manuscript  of  a  lecture  on  Browning.  Dr. 
Farrar  replied  to  the  request  with  a  haughty  refusal.  The 
journalist,  who  was  a  Scotch  graduate  and  a  choice  literary 
spirit,  was  turning  away  when  the  Dean  called  him  back. 
“  If  you  want  to  verify  the  quotations  from  Browning  that 
I  made  I  will  give  you  the  references,”  he  said.  “Thank 
you,  but  I  need  not  trouble  you,”  answered  the  journalist. 
“I  think  I  can  recite  the  poems  you  read.” 

Generally  preachers  and  speakers  are  quite  willing  to 
lend  journalists  their  notes  after  a  speech.  Mr.  Joseph 
Chamberlain  always  passed  down  to  the  reporters’  table 
any  notes  that  he  had  used  in  a  speech  containing  figures 
or  quotations.  Sir  Henry  Campbell-Bannerman  was  always 
equally  obliging.  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  who  knows  the 
value  of  publicity,  is  ever  ready  to  help  journalists  in  their 
duties.  Mr.  Asquith,  who  has  never  courted  the  Press,  is 
considerate  to  journalists  when  they  ask  for  consideration. 

It  is  a  common  complaint  with  journalists  that  they  get 
less  help  at  religious  meetings  than  at  secular  gatherings. 
The  complaint  is  not  always  justified,  I  think.  The 
Church  Congress  is  certainly  a  notable  exception.  There 
a  press  secretary  makes  things  easy  for  the  journalists,  and 
usually  has  advance  copies  of  papers  and  addresses  to  dis¬ 
tribute  among  the  reporters.  The  Baptist  Union,  under 
Dr.  J.  H.  Shakespeare,  removes  all  unnecessary  difficulties 
for  pressmen.  But,  as  a  rule,  promoters  of  religious  meet¬ 
ings  do  leave  journalists  to  fend  for  themselves.  And  to 
some  degree  these  assemblies  suffer  from  the  neglect. 
The  Roman  Catholic  Church,  whose  propaganda  is  sleep¬ 
less,  is  far  too  wide  awake  to  neglect  the  Press.  This  fact 
— and  not  the  suspicion  so  often  voiced  that  there  are 
Roman  Catholics  on  the  staffs  of  the  newspapers — explains 
the  publicity  Roman  Catholicism  secures.  If  a  prominent 
Roman  Catholic  says  something  in  his  sermon  on  a  Sunday 


170 


The  Best  I  Remember 


that  he  wants  published  he  sees  that  a  paragraph  report  is 
in  the  newspaper  offices  early  on  Sunday  evening,  ready  for 
the  sub-editors  to  handle  as  soon  as  they  come  on  duty. 
The  possibilities  of  publication  are  thus  vastly  enhanced. 
If  Anglicans  and  Free  Churchmen  always  took  the  same 
care  to  meet  the  necessities  of  the  newspapers  they  would 
have  less  ground  for  complaint.  Now  after  sedulously 
neglecting  the  Press  for  many  years  the  churches  are  dis¬ 
covering  the  value  of  press  propaganda.  The  missionary 
societies  led  the  way,  and  have  set  up  a  Co-operative  Press 
Bureau.  The  Church  of  England  has  appointed  a  whole¬ 
time  publicity  agent  to  feed  the  Press.  But  most  Free 
Church  secretaries  give  journalists  very  little  encourage¬ 
ment.  One  of  them  told  me  once  that  he  held  the  whole 
Press  in  supreme  contempt.  He  has  certainly  not  made 
much  use  of  it — or  it  of  him. 

The  modern  craving  for  publicity  is  calculated  to  make 
an  ordinary  journalist  an  incorrigible  cynic.  Nor  is  the 
man  engaged  in  religious  journalism  immune.  I  have 
known  preachers  prepared  almost  to  sell  their  souls  for  a 
paragraph.  One,  I  remember,  never  preached  away  from 
his  own  church  without  sending  a  paragraph  in  his  own 
handwriting  (but  accompanied  by  someone  else’s  card)  to 
the  religious  papers,  and  the  paragraph  invariably  dwelt 
on  his  eloquence,  the  overwhelming  size  of  the  congrega¬ 
tion,  and  the  generosity  of  the  collection.  Needless  to  say, 
the  paragraphs  went  promptly  into  the  waste-paper  basket ; 
but  still  they  came.  On  one  occasion  a  well-known 
preacher,  whom  one  might  have  imagined  was  far  beyond 
such  puerile  vanities,  sought  me  out  after  he  had  made  a 
great  speech  on  a  great  occasion,  and  said :  “If  you  don’t 
give  me  a  good  show  in  the  Christian  World  for  this  speech 
I’ll  never  speak  to  you  again.”  And  he  has  not. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 


“the  process  of,  the  suns  ” 

Get  rid  of  the  miracles  and  the  whole  world,”  said 
Rousseau,  “will  fall  at  the  feet  of  Jesus  Christ.”  Dur¬ 
ing  my  thirty  years  in  religious  journalism  I  have  been 
watching  the  process  of  eliminating  the  miraculous  from 
Christianity ;  but  who  would  say  that  the  world  has  fallen, 
or  is  falling  at  the  feet  of  Jesus  Christ  ?  In  my  early  years 
it  was  the  common  argument  that  the  miracles  proved  the 
Divinity  of  Jesus;  then  the  ground  was  shifted  and  it  was 
argued  that  the  Divinity  of  Jesus  made  the  miracles 
credible.  The  pendulum  has  swung  past  both  arguments, 
with,  at  least,  a  large  modern  school  of  Christian 
theologians,  and  it  is  now  argued,  not  as  Huxley  said, 
that  miracles  do  not  happen,  but  that  they  may  happen, 
and  that  the  power  of  such  a  Personality  of  Jesus  might 
account  for  triumphs  of  mind  over  matter  so  supernatural 
to  all  appearances  as  to  be  miraculous.  Again,  it  is  be¬ 
coming  increasingly  recognized  that  the  miracles  of  Jesus 
— the  healing  miracles  are  not  put  in  this  category,  since 
psycho-therapists,  during  the  war,  performed  feats  of  heal¬ 
ing  by  the  power  of  suggestion  on  a  plane  with  some  of 
the  healing  miracles  of  Jesus — must  stand  the  test  of  the 
credibility  of  the  records  in  the  gospel.  Very  few  of  the 
broad  Evangelicals  to-day  take  the  birth  stories  of  St. 
Luke  literally.  They  put  them  in  the  category  of 
sublimatory  poetry.  Nor  do  they  attach  the  old  signifi¬ 
cance  to  the  miracles  recorded  in  St.  John.  I  have  heard 
even  so  orthodox  a  preacher  as  Dr.  Charles  Brown,  ex¬ 
president  of  the  Baptist  Union,  admit  that  Jesus  was  not 

171 


172 


The  Best  I  Remember 


omniscient  because  it  is  recorded  that  “  He  was  astonished.” 
And  Dr.  Forsyth  in  his  Congregational  lecture  on  the 
Person  of  Christ  treated  both  the  Virgin  Birth  and  the 
Physical  Resurrection  of  Jesus  as  open  questions.  During 
the  last  thirty  years  orthodox  theological  opinion  has 
abandoned  the  old  tenacity  of  conviction  concerning  the 
miracles.  But  Rousseau’s  prophecy  that  “all  the  world 
will  fall  at  the  feet  of  Jesus  ”  stands  unfulfilled. 

A  Rousseau  writing  to-day  would  probably  say  :  “Get 
rid  of  the  dogmas  saddled  upon  Christianity  by  St.  Paul 
and  all  the  world  will  fall  at  the  feet  of  Jesus.”  The 
Pauline  dogmas  of  the  historic  fall,  the  total  depravity  of 
man,  the  transactional  atonement  by  the  death  on  the  cross 
changing  God’s  mind  towards  man,  and  salvation  by  faith 
have,  by  no  means,  the  hold  they  had  twenty  years  ago. 
What  have  been  called  “Synoptic  Gospel  Christians”  are 
multiplying  in  the  Free  Churches,  especially  among  the 
younger  men.  They  stand  by  the  gospel  as  Jesus  taught  it 
according  to  the  records  of  Matthew,  Mark  and  Luke,  and 
they  decline  to  be  bound  by  dogmas  to  which  Jesus  gave 
no  authority.  They  insist  that  the  teaching  of  the  Founder 
is  the  supreme  test  of  what  is  essentially  Christian,  and 
that  Christianity  is  learning  the  mind  and  catching  the 
spirit  of  Jesus. 

The  rumblings  of  a  fierce  Congregational  controversy 
that  arose  forty  years  ago.  as  a  consequence  of  what  was 
called  the  Leicester  controversy  were  still  to  be  heard  when 
I  became  associated  with  religious  journalism.  That  con¬ 
troversy  swirled  round  a  demand  by  some  of  the  younger 
Congregational  ministers — among  them  Mr.  Allenson 
Picton,  Dr.  P.  T.  Forsyth,  and  Dr.  John  Hunter — that 
miracles  should  be  treated  as  open  questions.  These 
pioneers  were  suspect  for  many  years,  and  so  strong  was 
the  denominational  antagonism  to  such  latitudinarian  views 
that  more  than  one  of  the  Leicester  group  suffered  ostracism 
from  Congregational  pulpits.  But  the  echoes  of  that 


“  The  Process  of  the  Suns  ” 


173 


fierce  controversy  have  now  died  down.  In  some  measure 
the  down-grade  controversy  which  rent  the  Baptist  denom¬ 
ination  in  twain  and  threw  Dr.  John  Clifford  and  Mr. 
Spurgeon  into  hostile  camps  m  the  late  ’eighties  was  a  re¬ 
percussion  of  the  Leicester  controversy  coupled  with  fear 
of  the  results  of  the  Higher  Critical  study  of  the  Scripture. 
That  battle  has  also  been  fought,  and  the  very  name 
“Higher  Criticism,’’  which  at  one  time  struck  terror  in  the 
hearts  of  the  faithful,  has  almost  lost  its  power  to  terrify, 
especially  since  it  is  growingly  recognized  that  the  moral 
and  spiritual  power  of  the  Bible  is  reinforced  when  it  is 
freed  from  the  burden  of  patches  of  questionable  morality, 
and  doubtful  historicity. 

Biblical  criticism  and  the  historical  method  of  study 
were  causing  marked  shiftings  of  emphasis  in  theology 
before  the  war  but  the  war  broke  through  many  theological 
entrenchments.  The  need  for  the  restatement  of  a  doctrine 
of  Providence  is  one  of  the  war’s  legacies. 

The  complaint  is  becoming  common — especially  from 
the  governing  boards  of  theological  colleges — that  candi¬ 
dates  for  the  Free  Church  ministry  come  in  such  over¬ 
whelming  proportions  from  humble  homes.  It  is  true  that 
while  a  few  ministerial  candidates  are  sons  of  middle-class 
people  and  a  certain  quota  are  sons  of  ministers  (though 
it  is  seldom  that  the  son  of  a  conspicuously  successful 
minister  chooses  to  follow  his  father’s  calling  or  even  . 
identify  himself  very  conspicuously  with  church  life),  the 
great  majority  of  preachers  are  sons  of  the  people.  But  it 
has  always  been  so,  and  I  imagine  it  always  will  be  so. 
Spiritual  genius,  or  a  passion  for  promoting  the  Kingdom 
of  God,  seldom  emerges  out  of  affluence.  When  Jacob 
dreamed  of  a  ladder  reaching  from  earth  to  heaven  and  of 
the  traffic  of  the  angels  thereon,  his  head  was  resting  on 
a  stone  pillow.  And  it  is  eternally  true  that  the  soft- 
pillowed  life  of  luxurious  homes  rarely  produces  great 


The  Best  I  Remember 


174 

preachers.  Rev.  C.  H.  Spurgeon  was  the  son  of  a  small 
farmer;  Dr.  Parker’s  early  home  life  was  almost  squalid; 
Dr.  Clifford  began  work  as  a  lace-piecer  at  the  age  of  nine; 
Dr.  Orchard  spent  his  childhood  in  East  London  and  got 
his  elementary  education  in  a  Whitechapel  Board  School ; 
Dr.  John  A.  Hutton,  the  most  popular  Scottish  preacher 
to-day,  was  reared  in  a  small  shop ;  and  Gipsy  Smith 
in  a  travelling  caravan.  Dr.  J.  H.  Jowett  has  said, 
publicly,  that  he  was  born  and  brought  up  in  a  humble 
home  in  Halifax — in  a  street  in  which  not  a  flower, 
not  even  a  blade  of  grass  was  to  be  seen.  Rev.  W.  H. 
Armstrong,  minister  of  City  Road  Chapel,  the  citadel  of 
Methodism,  was  a  newsboy.  All  these  men  were  sleeping 
on  hard  pillows  when  the  dreams  of  heavenly  traffic  came 
to  them,  and,  firing  their  souls  with  visionary  power,  made 
of  them  the  stuff  that  great  preachers  emerge  from. 

I  think  it  is  this  belief  that  the  soft  pillow  destroys 
moral  and  spiritual  fibre  that  makes  the  Free  Churches 
suspicious  when  a  preacher  is  known  to  be  eager  to  make 
money,  and  contemptuous  when  a  preacher  dies  rich.  The 
idea  that  men  should  make  a  commercial  success  of  Chris¬ 
tian  ministry  is  abhorred.  Von  Harnack  has  a  passage  on 
this  point  in  his  “What  is  Christianity  ?  ’’  which  expresses 
the  mind  of  Free  Churchmen  on  prosperous  preachers. 

Preaching  takes  a  place  of  importance  in  the  Free 
Churches  that  Anglicans  often  wholly  misunderstand.  It 
is  an  ingrained  belief  in  the  Free  Churches  that  Christianity 
has  always,  from  the  days  of  the  primitive  Church,  been 
propagated  by  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel,  and  that  when¬ 
ever  preaching  has  been  neglected,  or  belittled,  Christianity 
has  lost  its  hold  on  mankind  and  its  vital  force  in  the  world. 
Such  a  conviction  necessarily  leads  to  emphasis — some¬ 
times  over-emphasis  being  placed  upon  preaching  power 
in  a  minister.  Save  only  character,  nothing  weighs  so 
heavily  in  the  selection  of  students  for  ministerial  training 


“  The  Process  of  the  Suns  ” 


175 


in  the  Free  Church.  Candidates  for  colleges  must  give 
evidence  that  they  have  felt  a  Divine  call  to  the  ministry 
of  the  Gospel ;  and  the  urge  to  preach,  and  preach  effec¬ 
tively,  is  regarded  as  a  collateral  proof  of  the  inward  “call.” 
The  casual  way  in  which  younger  sons  of  great  families 
often  go  automatically  into  the  Anglican  Church,  and  the 
idea  of  the  priesthood  being  regarded  as  a  profession  into 
which  a  man  may  enter  for  a  career  as  he  would  enter  the 
law  or  medicine,  is  unthinkable  to  Nonconformists.  As  a 
result,  the  general  level  of  preaching  in  the  Free  Churches 
is,  I  think  it  will  be  admitted,  higher  than  in  the  Episcopal 
Church.  Indeed,  one  obstacle  to  the  proposed  interchange 
of  pulpits  by  Anglicans  and  Free  Churchmen  is  that  Free 
Church  congregations  would  be  restive  under  the 
preaching  of  the  average  Anglican  clergyman.  It  sounds 
uncharitable,  but  some  truth  lies  behind  it.  My  own 
experience  as  a  fairly  frequent  worshipper  in  Episcopal 
churches  goes  to  confirm  it.  The  different  emphasis  put 
upon  the  place  of  the  sermon  in  worship  accounts  for  the 
disparity. 

Within  recent  years  there  has  been  a  very  notable  cross¬ 
current  of  tendency  between  the  Free  and  the  Episcopal 
Churches  in  the  matter  of  liturgy.  Among  Free  Church¬ 
men  there  is  a  growing  feeling  in  favour  of  liturgical  ser¬ 
vices — or  at  least  a  larger  element  of  liturgical  form  in 
worship.  Synchronously  there  has  been  a  disposition  on 
the  part  of  many  Anglicans  to  crave  for — and  as  far  as  it 
is  legally  possible  to  adopt — an  element  of  free  prayer  in 
their  services.  On  the  one  side  there  is  a  desire  to  seek 
that  which  the  other  seems  anxious  to  discard.  The  fact  that 
the  Congregational  Union  has  prepared  and  published  a 
volume  of  liturgical  services  is  evidence  of  a  tremendous 
revolution  of  feeling  since  the  two  historical  Nonconformist 
Churches — Baptist  and  Congregational — came  into  exist¬ 
ence  in  the  great  protest  against  uniformity  in  1662.  It 
is  one  of  time’s  deferred  revenges  that  this  spirit  of 


The  Best  I  Remember 


176 

reciprocal  compromise  should  now  manifest  itself  among 
Conformists  and  Nonconformists. 

The  great  Victorian  leaders  of  Nonconformity  would, 
I  imagine,  have  viewed  this  change  of  attitude  towards 
liturgy  with  misgiving.  They  stressed  the  prophetic 
aspect  of  the  pulpit.  Dr.  Dale  believed  that  free  prayer 
is  the  essence  and  germ  of  Free  Church  worship.  While 
he  welcomed  changes  in  Nonconformity  that  came  as  con¬ 
cessions  to  the  growth  of  culture  and  artistic  sensibility, 
he  did  so  only  as  long  as  the  changes  did  not  destroy  or 
weaken  the  old  purity  and  simplicity  of  the  Free  Church 
spiritual  witness.  Dr.  Dale  used  to  tell  in  this  connexion 
the  story  of  a  Saracen  king  who  had  led  his  army  to  victory 
so  often  that  his  flag  was  covered  with  trophies  won  from 
defeated  enemies.  Once,  however,  the  always-victorious 
army  met  its  equal,  and  the  battle  swayed  till  the  issue 
seemed  in  doubt.  Then  the  Saracen  king  called  to  his 
standard  bearer  :  “Tear  down  the  trophies;  let  the  soldiers 
see  the  old  bare  flag.”  At  the  sight  of  the  flag  bared  of 
its  embellishments  the  king’s  men-at-arms  leapt  into  the 
fight  with  a  fury  that  could  not  be  withstood  and  swept 
the  enemy  from  the  field  of  battle.  I  have  an  idea  that 
Dr.  Dale,  were  he  alive  to-day,  would  be  telling  that  story 
still.  He  would  have  felt,  as  Dr.  Lynn  Harold  Hough 
has  said,  that  there  is  something  almost  disconcerting  in 
the  thought  of  Congregationalism  speaking  to  the  spirit 
through  the  senses. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 


A  PRE-RAPHAELITE  EVANGELICAL 

A  SADLY  unappreciated  treasure  of  London  is  the 
Chapel  of  the  Ascension  which  Mrs.  Russell  Gurney 
erected  as  a  sanctuary  for  rest  and  silence  and  prayer,  and 
inward  communion  with  the  enduring,  unseen  realities. 
Frederic  Shields,  one  of  the  Pre-Raphaelites,  decorated  all 
four  walls  of  the  little  chapel  with  paintings  intended  to  be 
a  complete  exposition  of  the  Bible  from  the  standpoint  of  an 
artist  “walking  in  his  art  by  the  broad  law  of  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ.” 

As  the  decorative  scheme  was  nearing  its  completion 
I  asked  Mr.  Shields’  permission  to  visit  the  chapel, 
which  stands  back  from  the  Bayswater  Road,  near 
the  Marble  Arch,  and  write  an  article  about  his  work. 
After  one  rather  curt  refusal  he  relented,  and  not  only  gave 
me  access  to  the  chapel  but  offered  to  devote  a  day  to  ex¬ 
plaining  the  pictures  and  the  purposes  behind  them.  That 
day  was  a  delightful  and  memorable  experience.  Mr. 
Shields,  who  was  over  seventy,  was  a  frail  little  man  with 
bright  eyes  into  which  a  sweet  sadness  crept  as  he  talked. 
He  was  intensely  proud  of  the  chapel.  “I’ve  not  tried  to 
do  a  sonnet,”  he  told  me.  “I’ve  tried  to  paint  an  epic.” 
He  spared  himself  no  pains  to  expound  his  work,  and  with 
infinite  patience  explained  the  elusive  meanings  hidden 
behind  the  elaborate,  and,  to  my  mind,  rather  niggling, 
symbolism  on  the  panels  between  the  larger  pictures.  Par¬ 
ticularly  was  he  anxious  to  show  me  that  he  had  painted 
upon  the  chapel  walls  the  whole  story  of  Biblical  revela¬ 
tion,  not  as  it  had  been  done  in  Italy  from  a  Roman 

177 


The  Best  I  Remember 


178 

Catholic  standpoint,  but  in  the  spirit  of  English 
Evangelicalism. 

He  was  bitterly  disappointed  (he  told  me  in  a  letter) 
that  the  religious  press  had  utterly  ignored  the  existence 
of  the  chapel,  because  he  felt  sure  that  any  notice  com¬ 
mending  the  spirit  evidenced  on  its  walls  would  bring  it 
before  multitudes  of  Christian  people  who  would  gladly 
be  directed  to  it.  Even  yet  I  think  the  remarkable  little 
chapel  is  very  little  known.  Only  one  person  in  ten  to 
whom  I  have  mentioned  it  has  ever  heard  of  the  place. 
Even  Americans  visiting  London  seem  to  omit  it  from 
their  “schedule.” 

Mr.  Shields,  I  gathered,  had  originally  been  a  Baptist, 
but  had  later  in  life  associated  himself  with  the  Plymouth 
Brethren.  Concerning  the  plenary  inspiration  of  the 
Bible,  from  Genesis  to  Revelation,  he  had  not  a  possible 
probable  shadow  of  a  doubt.  I  thought  when  he  led  me 
eagerly  across  the  chapel  to  draw  my  special  attention  to 
his  picture  of  the  great  fish  that  swallowed  Jonah  that  our 
talk  would  come  to  an  abrupt  end.  As  we  stood  before 
the  picture  he  said  sharply  : 

“You  are  a  Christian,  aren’t  you?” 

“I  hope  so,”  I  replied;  “at  least  I  try  to  be.” 

^  “Then,  of  course,  you  believe  that  the  great  fish  did 
I  swallow  Jonah,”  he  added  confidently, 
t  “I  should  not  like  to  say,”  I  answered,  “that  I  interpret 
it  as  a  literal  fact.” 

Mr.  Shields  was  visibly  shocked. 

^  “Oh,”  he  said  sadly,  “I’m  sorry,  very  sorry,  because 

j  I  don’t  think  any  man  can  be  a  Christian  unless  he  believes 
I  that  Jonah  was  swallowed  by  the  great  fish>  To  me  it  is 
a  prophecy  of  Christ’s  resurrection  after  three  days  in  the 
tomb.” 

I  felt  sure  Mr.  Shields  was  repenting  his  offer  to  show 
me  his  pictures,  and  I  quite  expected  him  to  give  me  a 
prompt  dismissal.  That  he  did  not  I  attribute  to  the 


A  Pre-Raphaelite  Evangelical  179 

charity  that  overcame  his  sense  of  my  total  unworthiness  to 
understand  his  paintings.  After  a  chilly  interlude  he  be¬ 
came  quite  gracious  again,  and  chatted  freely  about  his 
association  with  the  Pre-Raphaelites.  Only  in  a  reference 
to  Rossetti  did  any  suggestion  of  unkindness  creep  into 
his  recollections — which,  of  course,  were  not  intended  for 
publication.  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti,  he  said,  was  a  man 
with  a  coarse,  sensual  mind. 

Mr.  Shields  was  a  Puritan  to  the  core.  He  had  had  a 
strange,  and,  I  fancy,  chequered  life,  and  some  of  his  ways 
were  queer.  I  learned  afterwards  that  he  had  married  an 
artist’s  model  out  of  pity  and  not  for  love.  On  the  morn¬ 
ing  of  his  marriage  he  went  off  alone  for  his  honeymoon, 
and  for  a  long  time  he  had  not  lived  with  his  wife — not  for 
any  fault  of  hers,  but  just  because,  like  Caliban’s  Setebos, 
it  pleased  him  to  do  so. 

From  our  conversation  I  was  led  to  assume  that 
he  meant  to  retire  when  the  Chapel  of  the  Ascension 
was  completed,  and  I  mentioned  this  conclusion  in  my 
article.  Mr.  Shields,  though  he  said  he  had  nothing  but 
admiration  for  everything  else  that  I  had  written  about 
the  chapel,  was  irate  over  the  suggestion  that  his  art 
career  was  nearing  its  end.  He  wrote  complaining  that 
people  would  think  he  was  effete,  and  he  was  fearful  lest 
it  might  have  injurious  consequences  to  his  future  art  life 
and  means.  I  made  the  correction,  with  apologies.  Not 
long  afterwards  the  old  artist  died.  The  Chapel  of  the 
Ascension  was  his  last  and  greatest  work.  As  soon  as  he 
was  dead  the  trustees  of  the  Chapel  of  the  Ascension  had 
the  building  licensed  for  public  worship,  and  Anglican 
services  are  now  held  there.  This  had  been  a  bone  of 
contention  in  Mr.  Shields’s  lifetime.  He  was  vehement 
in  his  opposition  to  any  ordered  services  being  held  within 
its  walls,  and,  being  of  a  somewhat  litigious  disposition, 
he  would  probably  have  contested  the  right  of  the  trustees 
to  put  the  chapel  to  that  use.  I  believe  the  trustees  de- 


i8o 


The  Best  I  Remember 


ferred  to  the  old  artist’s  wishes  and  took  no  steps  to  thwart 
his  desires  in  his  lifetime.  It  seems  certain  that  Mrs. 
Russell  Gurney,  the  donor,  had  contemplated  the  use  of 
the  chapel  for  public  worship,  as  she  left  directions  in  her 
will  that  certain  holy  vessels  she  possessed  should  be 
placed  on  the  altar  in  the  chapel. 


CHAPTER  XXIX 


DR.  FAIRBAIRN  AND  OTHERS 

Dr.  ANDREW  FAIRBAIRN,  who  as  first  Principal 
of  Mansfield  College  carried  Nonconformity  into  the 
very  heart  of  the  Anglican  citadel  of  Oxford,  and  was  one 
of  the  greatest  scholars  the  Free  Churches  have  given  the 
world,  had  a  brother  who  was  a  popular  Scottish  evangelist ; 
and  their  mother  always  thought  the  evangelist  was  the 
greater  man.  Dr.  Fairbairn’s  learning  was  prodigious. 
His  power  of  synthesis  was  extraordinary ;  and  his  massive 
lectures  on  history  had  a  Carlylean  sweep.  I  doubt  if  his 
books  are  read  much  to-day.  I  asked  one  of  his  old  students 
once  if  he  thought  Dr.  Fairbairn  was  living  in  his  books. 
He  told  me  that  whenever  he  went  into  an  old  Mansfield 
man’s  library  and  took  down  Fairbairn’s  books,  he  gener¬ 
ally  found  the  historical  introductions  thumb-marked,  as 
if  they  were  well  read,  but  when  he  turned  to  the  pages  that 
contain  Dr.  Fairbairn’s  own  original  contribution  to  the 
subject  the  pages  were  seldom  cut,  and  if  cut  looked  quite 
clean.  Dr.  Fairbairn  as  a  preacher  and  speaker  required 
a  solid  hour  at  least.  He  would  approach  Milton,  for 
example,  by  a  comprehensive  sweep  over  Greek  thought, 
and  lead  up  to  Cromwell  by  a  survey  of  the  theory  of 
government,  starting  with  Plato’s  Republic.  At  the  end 
of  forty  minutes  he  would  amaze  his  hearers  by  hinting 
that  he  was  now  nearing  the  suburbs  of  his  central  subject. 
His  oratory  was  magnificent.  He  could  “splash  at  a  ten 
league  canvas  with  brushes  of  comet’s  hair,”  so  opulent  were 
his  historical  resources  and  so  wide  his  horizons.  I  once 
saw  him  fail  in  ghastly  fashion.  He  was  preaching  at 

i8i 


i82 


The  Best  I  Remember 


one  of  the  Tuesday  dinner-hour  services  for  City  men 
at  Bishopsgate  Chapel.  The  service  begins  at  1.15  and 
must  end  a  few  minutes  before  two  o’clock  so  that  the  men 
can  be  back  at  their  offices  and  warehouses  punctually. 
Dr.  Fairbairn,  wholly  unaccustomed  to  the  tyranny  of  a 
clock,  found  himself  with  seventeen  minutes  for  his  sermon. 
Given  seventy  minutes  he  might  do  himself  justice;  but 
seventeen  minutes  !  He  gave  us  a  sort  of  prelude  to  his 
introduction  to  a  massive  discourse ;  but  he  was  desperately 
uncomfortable  and  quite  ineffectual.  As  it  was  he  went 
on  till  perilously  near  two  o’clock,  and  might  have  even 
passed  the  hour,  but  one  by  one  the  City  men  “folded  their 
tents  like  the  Arabs  and  as  silently  stole  away.”  Dr.  Fair¬ 
bairn  accepted  the  closure. 

Hearing  Dr.  Fairbairn  and  reading  Macaulay  were 
similar  experiences.  The  Oxford  Principal  and  the  Whig 
historian  shared  a  love  of  antithetical  sentences.  When 
once  Dr.  Fairbairn  fell  into  antitheses  the  sonorous 
rhythms  rolled  from  his  lips  like  a  Hebrew  chant. 

Old  Mansfield  students  tell  many  good  stories  of  the 
curious  predicaments  into  which  Dr.  Fairbairn’s  rolling 
eloquence  lured  him  and  from  which  he  escaped  with  glory. 
Once,  so  the  story  goes,  he  was  addressing  a  mixed  audi¬ 
ence  on  the  contrast  between  Aberdeen  and  Oxford  Uni¬ 
versities.  He  drew  a  vivid  picture  of  the  hardships  of  the 
Scottish  undergrads  at  Aberdeen  in  his  young  days,  spoke 
of  their  spartan  oatmeal  diet  and  their  dreary  bare  lodgings. 
Against  this  austere  background  he  painted  a  vivid  word 
picture  of  the  sybaritic  luxuriousness  of  the  Oxford  under¬ 
graduate.  “Look  at  him,”  he  said,  “as  he  sprawls  in  his 
sumptuously  upholstered  study  chair,  with  his  legs 
stretched  across  to  another  chair — a  cushion  under  his 
head,  another  cushion  under  his  feet  and  a  third  cushion 
under  his — (then  he  remembered  his  mixed  audience) — 
under  his — his  superincumbent  mass.”  Everyone  gasped ; 
then  they  cheered  at  the  clever  recovery  out  of  the  rough. 


Dr.  Fairbairn  and  Others  183 

A  fine  capacity  for  contemptuous  frenzy  was  one  of  Dr. 
Fairbairn ’s  characteristics.  He  exploded  easily.  Once 
when  he  was  in  Italy — with,  I  think,  Mr.  Joseph  King — 
they  visited  the  little  chapel  at  Assisi,  sacredly  associated 
with  St.  Francis,  and  a  monk  gave  Dr.  Fairbairn  a  little 
printed  prayer  for  the  conversion  of  England.  Dr.  Fair¬ 
bairn  was  wrath.  “What  Roman  Catholic  is  there  in  Eng¬ 
land,”  he  asked,  “that  an  educated  man  could  consult  on 
any  matter  in  theology  or  religion  ?  ”  The  suave  priest 
mentioned  the  name  of  an  ecclesiastic  resident  in  Oxford. 
Dr.  Fairbairn  literally  boiled  over.  “A  perfectly  illiterate 
person,”  he  retorted  in  the  broad  Scotch  that  he  forgot  in 
his  calmer  moments.  And  he  stamped  out  of  the  chapel 
in  patent  fury. 

As  Dr.  Fairbairn  grew  older  he  became  more  and  more 
diffuse  in  his  style,  and  a  speech  or  a  sermon  became  a 
series  of  elaborate  digressions  from  a  main  theme,  of 
which  his  hearers  caught  only  occasional  glimpses.  No 
wit,  and  very  little  humour — and  that  of  a  rather  elephan¬ 
tine  order — ^garnished  Dr.  Fairbairn ’s  utterances.  They 
were  learned,  solid  and  often  magnificent — exhausting  as 
well  as  exhaustive.  After  his  visit  to  India  Dr.  Fairbairn’s 
theology  became  somewhat  ambiguous.  Contact  with  the 
Oriental  mind  softened  his  dogmatism.  He  realized  afresh 
that  Christianity  is  an  Oriental  religion  that  has  been  ^ 
squeezed  into  Occidental  thought  forms,  and  he  believed 
that  when  the  East  had  experienced  Christianity  it  would 
send  it  back  to  the  West  enriched  and  deepened.  Dr. 
Fairbairn,  after  his  Indian  tour,  wrote  and  re-wrote  five 
times  a  chapter  on  the  Person  of  Christ  which  he  included 
in  his  last  book. 

Perhaps  Dr.  Fairbairn’s  most  historic  utterance  was 
his  defiant  “We  will  not  submit,”  addressed  to  Lord  (then 
Mr.)  Balfour  when  leading  a  deputation  of  Free  Church¬ 
men  to  protest  against  the  1901  Education  Act.  That  out¬ 
burst  from  Dr.  Fairbairn  set  the  heather  ablaze.  It  was 

M 


The  Best  I  Remember 


184 

the  signal  for  the  passive  resistance  campaign,  when  the 
most  law-abiding  section  of  the  British  people  defied 
Parliament  and  disobeyed  its  statutes.  Dr.  Fairbairn, 
though  the  progenitor  of  passive  resistance,  did  not  him¬ 
self  passively  resist.  As  he  was  not  even  a  ratepayer — 
the  taxes  on  ‘the  Principal’s  house  at  Mansfield  College 
were  paid  by  the  college  authorities — he  could  not  partici¬ 
pate  actively  in  the  revolt  that  he  inaugurated. 

Oxford  did  every  honour  to  Dr.  Fairbairn  at  his  funeral. 
But  the  service  in  Mansfield  College  was  icily  correct.  On 
the  way  back  to  London  Mr.  Basil  Mathews,  who  was  once 
Dr.  Fairbairn ’s  secretary,  remarked  that  no  one  present  at 
the  funeral  would  have  gathered  that  Dr.  Fairbairn  was  a 
man  of  God.  Yet  that  was,  pre-eminently,  what  he  was. 

Now  that  the  premier  English  universities,  following 
the  lead  of  the  Scottish  universities,  have  begun  to  confer 
their  degrees  of  D.D.  upon  Free  Church  ministers  who 
have  attained  eminence  in  theological  scholarship,  the 
temptation  to  accept  degrees  from  doubtful  universities  in 
America  is  passing  away.  At  one  time  the  trade  in 
transatlantic  degrees  was  an  open  scandal.  Degrees  from 
Yale,  Harvard,  Princeton  and  Oberlin  were,  of  course, 
beyond  all  cavil ;  but  some  of  the  mushroom  univer¬ 
sities  in  the  United  States  literally  hawked  their  D.D. 
degrees  in  this  country.  I  knew  one  minister  who  got  a 
D.D.  for  ^5,  and  procured  another  for  a  friend  at  the 
same  figure.  Any  backwoods  college  which  secured  a 
State  charter  as  a  university — and  the  charters  were  easily 
procured — had  the  legal  right  to  confer  honorary  degrees  ; 
and  some  of  these  colleges — scarcely  equal  as  educational 
institutions  to  any  British  polytechnic: — found  the  fees  paid 
by  recipients  of  these  degrees  a  useful  source  of  income. 
The  responsible  American  universities  were  disgusted  at 
the  traffic  and  did  all  they  could  to  stop  it.  Now  all 
our  leading  Free  Church  denominations  have  devised 


Dr.  Fairbairn  and  Others 


185 

machinery  for  testing  the  value  of  honorary  degrees,  and 
refuse  to  recognize  any  doubtful  honours  in  their  year-book 
lists  of  accredited  ministers. 

The  scandal  arising  from  the  traffic  in  worthless  degrees 
was  effectually  exposed  through  the  Christian  World,  which 
was  sued  by  a  London  evangelist  for  damages  for  libel — 
the  alleged  libel  (of  which  I  was  the  author)  being  in 
describing  the  institution  which  sold  him  his  D.D.  and 
S.T.D.  as  a  “fake  university.”  The  case,  when  it  came 
before  the  King’s  Bench  Court,  created  a  sensation.  The 
evangelist,  who  caused  much  amusement  by  his  weird  pro¬ 
nunciation  of  the  Latin  in  his  diploma,  shrivelled  under 
cross-examination  by  Mr.  H.  F.  (now  Sir  Henry  Fielding) 
Dickens,  K.C.  The  case  was  laughed  out  of  court.  On 
the  second  day  the  special  jury  intimated  that  they  did  not 
want  to  hear  any  more  of  the  defendant’s  case,  and  gave 
a  verdict  for  the  Christian  World,  For  some  years  after 
that  libel  action  doubtful  American  degrees  were  referred 
to  me  for  investigation  by  one  eminent  Free  Church 
secretary.  The  reports  of  the  Commissioners  of  Education 
in  the  United  States,  sent  to  me  from  Washington,  enabled 
me  to  assess,  pretty  accurately,  the  standard  of  any  univer¬ 
sity  from  which  doubtful  degrees  emanated;  but  I  received 
valuable  help  from  American  university  authorities  who 
were  as  anxious  to  stamp  out  the  trade  in  bogus  degrees 
as  anyone  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic.  I  am  afraid,  how¬ 
ever,  that  the  traffic  would  revive  if  vigilance  were  relaxed. 

Though  I  have  not  the  exact  figures,  I  believe  I  am 
right  in  saying  that  two  out  of  every  three  of  the  D.D. 
degrees  of  London  University  (which  is  a  doctorate  won 
by  presentation  of  a  thesis  by  a  graduate  in  theology)  have 
been  taken  by  Free  Church  ministers.  This  is  an  achieve¬ 
ment  of  which  the  Free  Churches  have  every  reason  to 
take  pride. 

.Since  Oxford  University  has  taken  to  itself  the  right  to 
confer  its  D.D.  degree  on  Free  Churchmen  and  has  exer- 


i86 


Xhe  Best  I  Remember 

cised  it  in  the  case  of  Dr.  W.  B.  Selbie,  the  learned 
Principal  of  Mansfield  College,  it  will,  one  hopes,  make 
the  amende  honorable  to  Dr.  R.  F.  Horton.  The  furore 
which  arose  thirty  odd  years  ago  when  Robert  Forman 
Horton,  one  of  the  first  Dissenters  to  be  admitted  to  Oxford 
University  after  the  abolition  of  the  sectarian  tests,  was 
appointed  Examiner  in  Theology  and  then  deprived  of 
that  office  is  forgotten  now.  Dr.  Horton  needs  no  im¬ 
primatur  from  his  own  university  upon  his  theological 
scholarship;  but  the  degree  of  D.D.  from  Oxford  would 
honour  the  university  as  much  as  the  man.  Dr.  Horton 
is  a  son  of  whom  his  alma  mater  has  reason  to  be  proud. 
His  career  at  the  university  ending  in  a  Fellowship  at  New 
College  was  dazzling,  and  his  distinguished  work  as 
preacher,  teacher  and  writer  has  since  carried  his  name  to 
the  ends  of  the  earth. 

The  late  Dr.  John  Hunter  was  as  shy  as  a  mouse ;  but 
he  was  as  bold  as  a  lion  in  the  pulpit.  The  contrast  be¬ 
tween  Dr.  Hunter  in  and  Dr.  Hunter  out  of  the  pulpit 
was  almost  incredibly  vivid.  When  he  began  to  preach 
it  seemed  as  if  a  new  personality  invaded  him.  His  voice, 
manner,  even  his  appearance  changed.  No  preacher  of  my 
acquaintance  threw  so  much  passion  into  his  preaching, 
and  I  have  seen  him  come  out  of  the  pulpit  trembling  and 
exhausted  after  the  effort  of  preaching.  Dr.  Hunter  was 
almost  the  last  of  the  Independents.  He  was  an  ecclesias¬ 
tical  individualist  to  the  finger-tips.  In  his  young  days 
he  was  a  perfervid  evangelical ;  but  in  his  later  years  his 
theology  approximated  to  Unitarianism.  When  in  Glas¬ 
gow  he  withdrew  from  the  Scottish  Congregational  Union, 
but  when  finally  he  came  to  London  he  would  gladly  have 
joined  the  Congregational  Union  of  England  and  Wales. 
A  technical  difficulty  arose  because  Dr.  Hunter  would  not 
become  a  member  of  a  London  Congregational  church  to 
qualify  for  fellowship  with  the  Union.  “I  shall  never 


Dr.  Fairbairn  and  Others  187 

again,”  he  wrote  to  me,  “ally  myself  with  any  church.” 
He  had  reached  the  conclusion  that  Jesus  never  intended 
to  found  a  church,  but  meant  His  followers  to  leaven 
human  society,  like  the  yeast  in  His  parable.  Still,  Dr. 
Hunter  was  very  sore  that  the  rule  of  the  Congregational 
Union  was  enforced  against  him,  and  that  his  name  was 
not  enrolled  among  the  accredited  ministers  in  the  “Con¬ 
gregational  Year-Book.” 

The  sortie  that  Dr.  Hunter  made  from  Glasgow  to 
London  twenty  years  ago  was  one  of  his  mistakes.  He 
was  deeply  disappointed  with  his  ministry  at  the  King’s 
Weigh  House  Chapel.  Though  he  attracted  a  large  fol¬ 
lowing  he  never  felt  at  home  there,  and  just  when  he 
seemed  to  have  success  within  his  grasp,  he  suddenly 
retreated  to  Glasgow.  But  London  had  unsettled  him, 
and  his  second  term  of  ministry  at  Trinity  Church  did  not 
repeat  the  glories  of  his  first  pastorate  there.  Dr.  Hunter 
was  happiest,  and  at  his  best  too,  when  he  was  preaching 
in  the  Bechstein  Hall  and  at  University  Hall,  where  he 
gathered  people  of  his  own  genre  drawn  from  all  the 
churches  and  no  churches— people  who  felt  the  need  of  a 
worshipful  service  without  committing  themselves  beyond 
being  “on  the  side  of  the  angels.”  The  institutional  side 
of  church  life  was  uncongenial  to  Dr.  Hunter.  He  was 
a  preacher  and  only  a  preacher.  His  shyness  made 
pastoral  duties  irksome  to  him.  He  paid  a  pastoral  call- 
in  the  mood  of  a  mind  of  a  man  who  goes  to  a  dentist 
and  discovers  as  soon  as  he  has  rung  the  bell  that  the 
need  for  the  visit  has  quite  vanished.  Still,  Dr.  Hunter 
loved  a  gossip  with  a  congenial  spirit.  He  often  dropped 
into  my  room  in  Fleet  Street  for  a  long  talk,  but  I  never 
succeeded  in  getting  him  to  my  club.  He  froze  in  un¬ 
familiar  company. 


CHAPTER  XXX 


WAYS  AND  VAGARIES  OF  PREACHERS 
S  long  as  preaching  endures  preachers  will  vary  in  their 


methods  of  preparation  and  in  the  extent  to  which  they 
use  manuscript  in  the  pulpit.  When  Dr.  J.  D.  Jones,  of 
Bournemouth,  was  a  young  minister  in  his  first  pastorate 
at  Lincoln  I  was  his  guest  for  a  week-end.  Over  the 
dinner-table  he  gently  reproached  his  wife.  “Do  you 
know,”  he  said,  “that  you  put  my  evening  sermon  in  my 
wallet  this  morning.  If  I  had  known  it  before  I  began 
preaching  I  should  never  have  got  through  my  sermon.” 
Dr.  Jones’s  habit  was  to  write  his  sermons  in  full,  carry 
the  MS.  with  him  into  the  pulpit,  but  never  take  the 
manuscript  out  of  his  pocket.  Practically  he  memorized 
his  sermons — a  method  that  has  nothing  to  be  said  for  it 
except  in  condemnation  of  its  needless  strain  upon  mind 
and  memory.  Now  Dr.  Jones  places  his  manuscript — 
written  in  a  copper-plate  hand>  without  an  erasure  or  an 
emendation — on  the  open  Bible,  and  with  scarcely  more 
than  an  occasional  glance  preaches  with  what  seems  to  his 
hearers  to  be  complete  independence  of  script.  He  vows 
that  he  cannot  make  an  impromptu  speech  or  preach  an 
extempore  sermon. 

Dr.  J.  H.  Jowett  writes  out  his  sermons,  works  over 
them,  interlining  and  embellishing,  and  by  the  time  he 
comes  to  preach  he  is  so  familiar  with  his  manuscript  that 
he  treats  it  as  non-existent.  In  May,  1920,  Dr.  Jowett  aban¬ 
doned  this  habit  of  a  lifetime  and  began  preaching  from 
skeleton  notes  which  outlined  his  scheme  of  thought,  but 
left  the  phrasing  to  the  impulse  of  the  moment.  The 


188 


Ways  and  Vagaries  of  Preachers  189 

change  brought  a  new  element  of  spontaneity  into  Dr. 
Jowett’s  preaching  but  at  the  loss  of  the  delicate  nuances  for 
which  Dr.  Jowett’s  admirers  look,  and  after  a  very  short 
experiment  he  reverted,  reluctantly,  to  the  manuscript 
habit.  Dr.  Parker  pondered  over  his  sermons  in  the  quiet 
of  his  study,  and  took  into  the  pulpit  a  few  scrawled  catch¬ 
words  on  a  half-sheet  of  notepaper.  Dr.  Campbell  Morgan 
relied  on  his  amazing  fluency  for  his  form  of  expression, 
but  he  worked  very  hard  at  the  framework  of  his  expository 
sermons  before  preaching. 

A  note  Dr.  Orchard  once  sent  me  when  I  asked  for  the 
manuscript  of  a  special  sermon  he  had  announced  indicates 
his  method  of  sermon-making.  “I  cannot,”  he  wrote, 
“promise  Sunday’s  sermon  at  this  stage.  It  may  turn 
out  quite  useless  for  printing.  I  do  not  pursue  Dr.  Jowett’s 
method  of  starting  on  Tuesday  to  write.  I  think  about 
my  sermons  a  little  only,  read  up  anything  that  is  neces¬ 
sary  as  soon  as  I  know  what  I  want  to  talk  about,  and 
then  leave  everything  until  the  last  day,  when  I  just  start 
and  write  right  away.  Of  course,  it  means  occasional 
mare’s  nests,  and  sometimes  the  very  best  comes  only 
when  one  gets  into  the  pulpit  and  practically  abandons 
what  one  has  written  entirely  and  takes  only  a  fragment  of 
what  one  has  prepared.  The  trouble  is  that  then  one  really 
has  no  record,  and  what  one  tries  to  print  afterwards  is 
nothing  like  the  thing  delivered.  But  I  suppose  that  this 
is  as  it  should  be.  I  will  let  you  know  after  delivery 
whether  I  can  let  you  have  the  MS.  But  I  have  three 
sermons  a  month  being  published  now,  and  it  nearly 
exhausts  everything.  I  am  sure  I  very  rarely  preach 
three  times  in  a  month  anything  worth  remembering.” 
Dr.  Charles  Brown  writes  his  sermons  in  extenso, 
using  both  sides  of  the  paper.  Dr.  Clifford  has  a  full 
manuscript.  Rev.  Silvester  Horne  wrote  both  his  sermons 
and  his  speeches.  He  even  wrote  his  children’s  addresses. 
His  successor  at  Kensington  (Rev.  Thomas  Yates)  says  he 


The  Best  I  Remember 


190 

found  quite  a  goodly  little  hoard  of  them  between  the 
pages  of  the  pulpit  Bible. 

Over-preparation  of  sermons  rather  than  under-prepara¬ 
tion  is  the  danger  of  the  pulpit  to-day.  Manuscript  may 
be  a  necessity  or  a  crime,  but  generally  it  is  a  crime,  and 
on  the  whole  congregations  are  prepared  to  sacrifice  some¬ 
thing  in  literary  finish  and  precision  of  phrasing  if 
ministers  will  leave  their  sermon  manuscripts  in  the  vestry. 
On  the  other  hand,  congregations  rightly  resent  a  preacher 
neglecting  the  essential  preparation  of  a  sermon.  This  is 
always  detected.  At  a  ministers’  conference  in  America 
one  minister  declared  that  he  never  prepared  his  sermons. 
He  did  not  even  select  his  text  before  going  into  the  pulpit. 
He  just  picked  out  a  verse  from  the  Scripture  lesson  and 
announced  that  as  his  text,  saying,  “These  words  contain 
three  profoundly  important  lessons  for  us,  my  friends.” 
“Yes,  and  what  do  you  do  then  ?  ”  asked  an  amazed  minis¬ 
terial  brother.  “Why,  then  I  hustle  round  and  find 
three.” 

All  writers  and  speakers  are,  consciously  or  uncon¬ 
sciously,  predatory  in  the  matter  of  ideas,  since  everything 
that  is  worth  thinking  and  saying  has  been  thought  and 
said  long  ago;  but  cases  of  flagrant  plagiarism  are 
singularly  few.  I  remember  only  about  five  glaring 
instances.  What  is  perhaps  the  most  audacious  plagiar¬ 
ism  in  recent  times — the  Fleming-Talmage  episode — 
occurred  just  outside  my  period.  Once  I  took  part  in 
exposing  a  plagiarist.  But  that  episode  has  always  been 
a  painful  memory — a  haunting  memory,  in  fact,  since  it 
broke  a  career  and  accelerated  a  death.  The  plagiarist  in 
this  case  was  a  Congregational  minister,  a  brilliant  man  for 
whom  there  was  no  excuse,  except  his  indolence.  Yet  he 
had  pilfered  from  other  men’s  sermons  for  years.  My 
attention  was  drawn  to  a  series  of  sermons  he  was  advertis- 


Ways  and  Vagaries  of  Preachers  191 

ing  on  the  moral  teaching  of  Shakespeare.  Examination 
of  shorthand  notes  taken  of  the  first  discourse  left  no  room 
for  doubt  that  the  preacher  was  appropriating  not  merely 
the  ideas,  but  the  ipsissima  verba  of  another  Congrega¬ 
tional  minister’s  book  on  that  subject.  I  engaged  a 
verbatim  shorthand  writer  to  report  two  more  of  the 
lectures,  and  then  I  sent  the  transcripts  of  the  notes  to  the 
author  from  whom  the  preacher  was  borrowing  in  such  a 
wholesale  and  barefaced  fashion.  The  author  addressed  a 
letter  to  me,  as  editor  of  the  Independent  and  Noncon¬ 
formist,  protesting  against  the  outrage,  and  proving  the 
plagiarism  by  columns  of  “deadly  parallel.”  The 
preacher  pleaded  tricks  of  a  retentive  memory  and  uncon¬ 
scious  appropriation ;  but  the  exposure  split  his  church  and 
shattered  his  influence.  It  was  the  beginning  of  the  end  of 
his  career,  which  closed  in  shadow.  I  have  never  ventured 
since  to  expose  a  plagiarist. 

A  second  case  of  plagiarism  which  caused  me  deep 
anxiety  involved  a  very  popular  Welsh  Congregational 
minister — a  man  whom  I  knew  well  and  in  whose  home  I 
had  been  a  guest.  I  had  just  been  reading,  with  interest, 
a  volume  of  lectures  by  Dr.  McCook,  an  American  divine, 
on  “Studies  in  Nature,”  when  the  monthly  magazine  of  my 
Welsh  Congregational  minister  friend  came  into  my  hands. 
Turning  over  its  pages  I  noticed  the  curious  verse  he  had 
used  as  the  text  of  the  sermon  printed  in  the  magazine. 
Glancing  over  the  sermon  I  found  that  all  the  discourse 
was  strangely  familiar ;  then  it  flashed  upon  my  mind  that 
the  sermon  was  pilfered  from  Dr.  McCook.  Close 
comparison  disclosed  the  fact  that  the  entire  sermon  was 
a  deft  amalgam  of  two  lectures  in  “Studies  in  Nature.” 
The  discovery  haunted  me ;  but  I  did  nothing.  A  few 
months  later  my  ministerial  friend  vSent  me  an  agitated 
letter.  He  had,  he  said,  been  so  unwHl  and  worried  dur¬ 
ing  the  previous  week  that  he  had  got  into  arrears  with 
his  sermon  preparation,  till  on  Saturday  night  he  found 


The  Best  I  Remember 


192 

himself  with  only  one  sermon  ready.  In  desperation,  he 
said,  he  had  done  what  he  had  never  done  before — appro¬ 
priated  one  of  another  preacher’s  published  sermons.  A 
minister  who  had  been  present  in  his  congregation  had 
detected  the  plagiarism  and  might  seek  means  to  expose 
him.  He  begged  that,  if  anything  came  to  me  as  editor 
of  the  Independent  and  Nonconformist,  I  would,  for 
friendship’s  sake,  suppress  it,  and  spare  him  the  horror 
of  exposure.  I  replied  at  once,  promising  that  no  such 
communication  would  be  published ;  but  I  added  an  ex¬ 
pression  of  regret  that  he  had  used  another  man’s  sermon, 
and  also  of  sorrow  that  he  should  say  that  he  had  never 
done  so  before.  I  then  drew  his  attention  to  the  sermon 
he  had  published  in  his  own  magazine  and  to  the  appro¬ 
priation  from  McCook’s  “Studies  in  Nature.”  By  return 
I  received  a  letter  expressing  gratitude  for  the  “sharp 
reproof.”  I  had  pulled  him  up  with  a  jerk,  he  said,  and 
it  would  be  a  warning  to  the  end  of  his  life.  I  have  no 
doubt  that,  when  written,  the  letter  was  sincerely  meant; 
but  we  never  met  again  on  the  old  terms.  There  was 
something  of  “doubt,  hesitation  and  pain  ”  on  his  side. 

Once  I  heard  an  old  minister  who  had  retired  from 
active  pastoral  work  preach  at  a  week-night  service  a 
sermon  by  Dr.  Jowett,  which  had  appeared  in  a  religious 
paper  published  that  very  day.  And  I  listened  to  a  Welsh 
preacher  giving  a  children’s  address  which  had  appeared 
in  a  volume  of  children’s  sermons  by  another  Welsh 
preacher.  In  both  instances  the  plagiarism  was  flagrant 
and  beyond  all  question.  But  the  old  minister  was  ren¬ 
dering  a  voluntary  service  to  the  church  at  short  notice, 
and  the  other  preacher  was  not  seeking  to  make  a  reputa¬ 
tion  by  children’s  addresses.  So  both  offences  might  be 
put  in  the  category  of  venial  sins.  My  observation  leads 
me  to  think  that  plagiarism  in  Free  Church  pulpits  is  now 
very  rare. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 


CHANCE  MEETINGS 

The  first  time  I  saw  General  Booth  was  at  the  funeral  of 
Mrs.  Booth,  the  Mother  of  the  Army.  He  was  standing- 
in  an  open  carriage  in  the  cortege  as  it  crossed  London, 
waving  his  cap  to  the  crowd.  The  gesture  was  characteris¬ 
tic  of  his  natural  unconventionality.  In  later  years  I  knew 
him  fairly  well,  and  saw  him  frequently.  More  than  once 
I  interviewed  him,  and  on  one  of  his  motor  tours  I  rode 
with  him  for  some  hours  in  his  famous  white  car.  His 
delight  in  the  interest  taken  in  him  by  the  people  of  the 
countryside  was  almost  pathetic.  “Wonderful,”  he  would 
say,  “and  not  organized  at  all,”  as  he  pointed  to  the  groups 
of  villagers  clustered  at  cross-roads.  His  temper  was 
irascible  and  his  patience  short,  but  his  heart  was  as  big 
as  a  house.  He  was  criticized  for  the  arbitrary  rule  that 
prevailed  in  the  Salvation  Army,  but  he  defended  it  with 
sound  logic.  The  people  drawn  into  the  Salvation  Army, 
he  argued,  were  people  who  needed  discipline  and  had 
made  a  mess  of  life,  many  of  them,  from  want  of  self- 
discipline.  They  needed  direction  and  authority  from 
others,  just  as  much  as  raw  recruits  in  the  national  army. 
The  General  ruled  his  staff  with  an  iron  hand — he  also 
led  his  flock  like  a  shepherd ;  still,  some  of  the  stern  rules 
of  the  Army  were  not  of  his  making.  He  told  me,  for 
example,  that  the  edict  against  smoking  in  the  Salvation 
Army  was  self-imposed  by  the  rank  and  file.  It  was  their 
own  wish,  not  the  General’s  command. 

I  wrote  a  good  many  articles  about  the  Salvation 
Army’s  social  work,  especially  its  Labour  Colony  at 

193 


194 


The  Best  I  Remember 


Hadleigh  and  Mrs.  Bramwell  Booth’s  work  among  fallen 
women  and  for  little  children.  Business  brains  are 
always  put  into  the  Army’s  operations,  and  I  have  never 
felt  the  least  hesitation  in  saying  that  the  Army  gives  a 
sovereign’s  worth  of  value  for  every  pound  subscribed  to 
it.  Sir  Abe  Bailey,  the  South  African  gold  magnate,  holds 
this  view  strongly,  and  used  at  one  time  to  cah  himself  “a 
cheque-book  Salvationist.”  Once  when  he  had  invited 
General  Booth  and  Colonel  Kitching  to  lunch  at  a  leading 
club  in  Johannesburg,  their  table  was  conspicuously  placed 
in  the  centre  of  the  fashionable  dining-room  and  a  source 
of  interest  to  other  guests  in  the  hotel.  Before  beginning 
lunch  Sir  Abe  turned  to  General  Booth  and  said  :  “I  know 
you  like  to  say  grace;  will  you  say  it  now?  ”  So  the  old 
General  stood  up  and  asked  a  blessing  over  the  meal. 

The  smartest  thing  I  ever  heard  the  dear  old  General 
say  was  a  retort  upon  a  critic  who  expressed  astonishment 
that  the  Salvation  Army  accepted  money  from  a  bookmaker 
(Mr.  Herring).  “I  call  it  nonsense,”  he  said,  “to  talk  of 
dirty  money.  I  clean  it  by  the  good  use  I  make  of  it.  If 
Mr.  Herring,  who  makes  his  money  by  betting,  likes  to 
give  me  some  of  his  winnings,  I  will  spend  it  on  giving 
some  of  his  victims  another  chance  to  be  honest  men.” 

I  saw  a  good  deal  of  Mr.  Booker  Washington  when  he 
was  visiting  England.  The  leader  of  the  negroes  in  the 
United  States  and  the  author  of  “Up  from  Slavery  ”  had  a 
clever  way  of  dealing  with  interviewers.  I  watched  him 
one  Sunday  afternoon  at  the  Hotel  Cecil  withstanding  the 
combined  attacks  of  seventeen  interviewers.  He  received 
them  all  at  once  in  his  bedroom.  They  sat  on  his  bed, 
squatted  on  the  floor,  stood  by  the  mantelpiece,  and,  in¬ 
deed,  occupied  every  scrap  of  standing  or  sitting  room  that 
was  available.  Mr.  Washington  drew  all  their  fire.  His 
adroitness  came  out  not  so  much  in  what  he  actually  said, 
but  fn  what  he  avoided  saying,  and  in  the  skill  with 


Chance  Meetings  195 

which  he  dodged  committing  himself  to  anything  beyond 
generalities.  He  gave  nothing  away,  and  not  an  indis¬ 
cretion  fell  from  his  lips.  Not  a  word  would  he  say  about 
lynching,  nor  could  he  be  induced  to  protest  ever  so  mildly 
against  “Jim  Crow  ”  cars,  and  all  the  other  little  differentia¬ 
tions  that  the  Southern  whites  make  against  the  coloured 
man.  His  policy  for  the  negro  was  not  to  fight  for  rights, 
but  to  win  them.  Let  the  negro  show  that  he  could  be  a 
good  citizen,  an  honest  workman,  a  capable  clerk,  and  then 
the  colour  prejudice  would  come  to  a  natural  end.  This 
was  his  long  view  and  patient  aim.  He  agreed  that  in 
some  respects  the  negro  in  slavery  was  better  off  than  the 
negro  freed  but  not  free.  Having  been  a  slave  himself, 
however,  he  appreciated  the  boon  of  freedom  of  soul. 

I  lunched  with  Mr.  Booker  Washington  as  the  guest  of 
Mr.  John  H.  Harris,  of  the  Aborigines  Protection 
Society,  and  had  an  opportunity  during  a  full  afternoon’s 
conversation  to  measure  the  lofty  stature  of  the  man.  He 
sent  me  his  Tuskegee  College  journal  for  some  years  after¬ 
wards,  and  my  appreciation  of  his  sterling  qualities  and  his 
great  gift  of  leadership  was  intensified  by  reading  what  he 
wrote.  Now  the  American  negro  has  found  quite  another 
type  of  leader  in  Mr.  W.  E.  B.  Du  Bois,  who  stands  for 
a  wholly  different  policy.  His  battle-cry  for  the  negro  is 
defiant  and  bellicose.  Glory  in  yourTlack  skins,  he  cries. 
The  coloured  people  have  a  great  heritage  and  a  greater 
future.  Mr.  Du  Bois  tells  the  negro  that  Jesus  Christ 
was  not  a  white  man — that  he  had  a  dark  skin,  in  fact — 
and  he  reminds  the  American  coloured  race  that  the  yellow 
Chinese  people  complain  of  the  unpleasant  odour  of  the 
white  races.  This  is  carrying  the  war  into  the  enemy’s 
camp  with  a  vengeance.  Indeed,  Mr.  Du  Bois  aims  at 
federating  the  coloured  people  in  the  world  for  a  revolt 
against  white  domination  and  a  trial  of  strength  if  need 
be  with  the  whites.  When  I  was  in  the  United  States  in 
1920  I  found  some  Americans  distinctly  apprehensive  about 


The  Best  I  Remember 


196 

the  temper  of  the  American  negro.  The  coloured  question 
is  the  Irish  problem  of  the  United  States. 

Just  before  the  war  I  met,  at  a  Laymen’s  Missionary 
Conference  at  Buxton,  a  very  remarkable  Indian,  Prof. 
Raju,  who  was  studying  at  Oxford,  and,  inter  alia,  seek¬ 
ing  to  decide  while  in  England  the  branch  of  the  Christian 
Church  to  which  he  should  attach  himself.  He  had  be¬ 
come  a  Christian  under  Methodist  influence,  but  his  quest 
for  authority  was  driving  him  in  the  direction  of  Angli¬ 
canism  or  Catholicism.  In  India,  where  he  had  been  a 
professor  at  Agra  University,  he  was  acclaimed  as  the 
possessor  of  the  finest  philosophical  mind  in  the  East.  He 
was  young,  ardent,  devout  and  extremely  eloquent.  I 
was  especially  interested  in  an  argument  he  advanced  that 
Asiatic  history  is  divisible  into  two  parts  :  (i)  from  the 
beginning  of  things  up  to  the  year  1905,  and  (2)  from  1905 
onwards.  The  year  1905  was,  he  argued,  a  dividing  line  in 
time  for  Oriental  peoples,  because  in  that  year  the  Japanese 
defeated  the  Russians.  He  told  me  that  the  news  that  a 
white  race  had  been  overcome  in  battle  by  a  yellow  race 
(at  the  fall  of  Port  Arthur)  flashed  through  Asia  by  that 
strange  telephony  which  sends  news  vast  distances  in  the 
East  with  the  rapidity  almost  exceeding  that  of  the  tele¬ 
graph  itself.  Within  twenty-four  hours  of  the  fall  of  Port 
Arthur  on  January  2,  1905,  the  tidings  of  that  event  had 
come  across  the  Himalayas  into  India  and  was  being  dis¬ 
cussed  in  the  native  bazaars  at  Agra.  From  that  moment, 
said  Professor  Raju,  every  Asiatic  dated  the  birth  of  a  new 
hope,  and  Indian  nationalism  had  a  resurgence  of  courage. 

Why  is  it  that  humorists  are  so  frequently  solemn  men 
in  private  ?  One  of  the  gravest  men  that  I  ever  met  was 
Max  Adeler,  the  American  humorist.  He  wrote  “Out  of 
the  Hurly-burly  ”  and  “Elbow  Room,”  both  of  them  ex¬ 
ceedingly  droll  books.  In  private  life  Max  Adeler  was 


Chance  Meetings  197 

Mr.  C.  Heber  Clarke,  editor  of  a  hardware  paper  at  Phila¬ 
delphia,  but  interested  above  all  things  in  evangelical 
religion  and  Napoleon  Bonaparte.  He  was  a  very  solemn 
person  indeed.  I  met  him  two  or  three  times  when  he  was 
visiting  England  as  the  guest  of  Mr.  James  Bowden,  and 
if  I  had  not  known  that  he  was  the  author  of  side-splitting 
humorous  books  I  should  have  thought  him  incapable  of  a 
joke.  He  took  life  very  seriously,  but  his  zest  for  any¬ 
thing  in  the  way  of  a  relic  or  of  a  book  about  Napoleon  was 
almost  humorous.  It  was  so  schoolboyish  in  its  whole¬ 
heartedness.  I  told  him  of  a  near  neighbour  of  mine — 
to  whom  Dr.  Holland  Rose  had  introduced  me — Miss 
Lowe,  a  daughter  of  Sir  Hudson  Lowe,  who  was  Governor 
of  St.  Helena  during  Napoleon’s  captivity.  Miss  Lowe 
had  reached  the  age  of  84  without  having  been  photo¬ 
graphed,  so  one  day  I  got  my  camera  and  took  two 
photographs  of  her.  Neither  turned  out  well — the  lighting 
difficulties  in  her  room  were  too  severe  for  an  amateur  to 
overcome — but  she  was  very  excited  over  the  prints,  and 
thought  them  very  wonderful.  Max  Adeler  was  almost 
as  excited  as  Miss  Lowe  herself  when  I  told  him  about 
her  and  sent  him  one  of  the  photographs.  Possession  of 
the  picture  of  a  lady,  then  alive,  who  had  been  in  St. 
Helena  along  with  Napoleon,  was  a  real  source  of  joy  to 
him. 

When  I  first  met  Mr.  Jerome  K.  Jerome  his  gravity 
also  struck  me.  But  Mr.  Jerome  long  ago  passed  through 
his  humorous  phase.  He  is  now  a  humanitarian  who  uses 
both  the  stage  and  the  novel  as  a  pulpit.  His  father  was 
a  Baptist  minister,  and  he  was  brought  up  in  evangelical 
traditions,  from  which,  however,  he  broke  away.  I  heard 
him  say  that  reading  Ernest  Renan’s  “Life  of  Jesus” 
changed  all  his  thinking,  and  sent  him  back  to  Jesus  as 
ethical  teacher.  Mr.  Jerome  put  his  own  religion  into 
The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor  Back,  in  which  Jesus 
appears  in  the  guise  of  "the  stranger”  who  brings  out 


The  Best  I  Remember 


198 

everybody’s  good  qualities  by  taking  them  at  their  best. 
That  play,  Mr.  Jerome  told  me,  had  to  wait  five  years 
for  its  production.  He  felt  that  there  were  only  two  actors 
on  the  English  stage  to  whom  he  would  care  to  entrust 
the  personation  of  the  stranger — Mr.  J.  Forbes-Robertson 
and  Mr.  Martin  Harvey.  Both  read  the  play  and  liked  it, 
but  had  other  commitments.  Mr.  Forbes-Robertson — he 
is  now  Sir  Johnstone,  of  course — unexpectedly  found  him¬ 
self  with  an  unexpired  period  of  the  lease  of  a  Strand 
theatre  at  the  end  of  the  run  of  a  play.  The  Passing  of 
the  Third  Floor  Back  was  put  on  with  the  idea  that  it 
might  just  run  three  weeks.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  ran 
for  about  three  years,  and  ran  in  America,  in  fact,  every¬ 
where  that  the  English  language  is  spoken.  Mr.  Jerome’s 
humanitarianism  is  his  religion — that  and  his  kindling 
faith  in  the  good  that  is  in  the  worst  of  men.  Like  John 
Green  leaf  Whittier,  he  feels  that 

j  To  worship  rightly  is  to  love  each  other, 

1  Each  smile  a  hymn,  each  kindly  deed  a  prayer. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 


JOURNALISTIC  CONFRERES 

IF  it  be  true  that  “interests  pass  into  character,”  it  is 
equally  true  that  the  loss  of  interests  is  as  fatal  as  a 
disease.  The  late  Mr.  Spencer  Leigh  Hughes,  M.P.,  wrote 
his  Sub  Rosa  article  in  the  Morning  Leader  and  the  Daily 
News  for  so  long  that  that  daily  column  became  the 
supreme  interest  of  his  life.  When  the  Daily  News 
dropped  the  ^^Sub  Rosa”  feature,  Leigh  Hughes  was  lost. 
The  bottom  seemed  to  fall  out  of  all  things  for  him.  His 
sunny  nature,  too,  was  soured,  and  he  nursed  his  griev¬ 
ance,  talked  about  it,  wriggled  oblique  references  to  it  into 
nearly  everything  he  wrote — even  dragged  it  into  his 
speeches  ini  the  House  of  Commons.  In  a  way  the  loss  of 
that  daily  task,  which  had  become  the  habit  of  his  life 
and  the  pivot  of  his  day’s  round,  became  an  obsession.  It 
dislocated  the  machinery  of  his  being.  Life  dealt  other 
smashing  blows  at  him.  He  lost  his  son  and  his  wife  in 
swift  succession — and  the  heavens  seemed  as  brass  to  this 
man  whose  function  it  had  been  to  provide  a  daily  stream 
of  merriment.  Acidity  crept  into  his  humour  which  had 
never  before  been  more  than  just  vinegarish  in  flavour. 

Though  Leigh  Hughes’s  reputation  rested  upon  his 
humorous  writing,  he  prided  himself  on  his  serious  work, 
and  took  especial  pains  over  the  Parliamentary  sketch 
which  he  wrote  for  nearly  twenty  years  for  the  Christian 
]World.  It  was  a  relief  to  him  not  to  be  expected  to  be 
funny  in  that  column,  though  his  humour  would  creep 
out  at  times  even  there.  I  always  thought  Spencer  Leigh 
Hughes  was  greater  as  an  after-dinner  speaker  than  as  a 
N  199 


200 


The  Best  I  Remember 


writer — humorous  or  serious.  His  verbal  readiness  was 
phenomenal,  and  his  whimsicalities  were  quite  unforced. 
One  of  his  happiest  mots  was  uttered  at  a  Holborn 
Restaurant  dinner.  In  the  adjoining  room  a  group  of 
Scots  were  dining — it  was  a  “Burns  nicht  ” — and  as 
Hughes  was  proposing  a  toast  in  one  room  a  bagpiper 
began  skirling  in  the  other.  Hughes  paused,  waited  for  a 
lull,  and  then  dryly  remarked  :  “Now  that  the  rival  wind¬ 
bag  in  the  next  room  has  finished  I  will  proceed.” 

I  am  not  sure  that  Leigh  Hughes  cared  much  for  his 
reputation  as  an  after-dinner  speaker.  He  seemed  to  think 
it  ranked  him  with  professional  popular  entertainers.  Mr. 
Chauncey  Depew,  famous  all  over  America  for  his  post¬ 
prandial  oratory,  has  a  somewhat  similar  feeling,  Mr. 
Depew  used  to  tell  a  story  of  being  at  a  dinner  in  Chicago 
when  the  mayor,  who  was  presiding,  said,  in  introducing 
Mr.  Chauncey  Depew,  that  he  was  like  an  automatic 
machine.  “  You  put  in  a  dinner,  and  up  comes  a  speech.” 
The  vulgarism  exasperated  Mr.  Depew.  On  rising  to 
speak,  he  quietly  observed  that  he  did  not  want  to  discuss 
the  mayor’s  analogy,  but  he  did  want  to  point  out  the 
difference  between  his  after-dinner  speaking  and  the  chair¬ 
man’s,  since,  in  the  case  of  the  mayor,  “he  puts  in  a  speech, 
and  up  comes  your  dinner.” 

With  the  war,  and  the  crash  in  the  fortunes  of  the 
Liberal  party,  Spencer  Leigh  Hughes  lost  his  vital  interest 
in  politics.  He  stuck  to  the  House  of  Commons  because 
he  would  have  felt  forlorn  if  he  were  not  breathing  its 
atmosphere.  The  igi8  General  Election  found  him  quite 
unconcerned  as  to  whether  he  stood  as  an  Independent 
Liberal  or  a  Coalitionist.  He  left  it  to  his  Stockport  con¬ 
stituents  to  decide,  and  they  settled  it  for  him — he  took  the 
“coupon  ”  and  was  left  unopposed.  I  saw  him  on  that 
December  evening  when  the  Election  results  were  being 
announced  at  the  National  Liberal  Club.  He  was  totally 
unconcerned  as  news  came  of  oldi  Liberal  comrades  falling 


Journalistic  Confrdres 


201 


out  in  every  quarter.  “I’m  in,”  he  said,  “and  it’s  all  I 
care  for.  There  is  no  reality  in  English  politics  now.” 
I  never  saw  him  again. 

For  twenty-one  years  I  have  sat  in  the  same  room  in 
Fleet  Street  with  Mr.  Harry  Jeffs,  a  journalist  known  to  all 
Free  Church  ministers  as  an  author,  speaker,  critic  and 
Editor  of  the  Christian  World  Pulpit,  A  better  stable 
companion  could  not  be  desired.  Mr.  Jeffs  learned  his 
journalism  in  the  leisurely  old  Bohemian  days  before  office 
hours  entered  into  the  thoughts  of  Fleet  Street  men,  and  to 
change  his  habits  with  changing  times  has  never  occurred 
to  him  as  a  possibility.  A  prodigious  worker,  capable  of 
bearing  an  extraordinary  strain  of  work  when  the  occasion 
demands — and  it  often  does — he  ambles  at  ordinary  times 
in  his  own  leisurely  way  through  life.  Self-taught,  he 
reads  Latin,  Greek,  Hebrew,  French,  German,  Italian  and 
Spanish,  and  has  been  known  to  address  German  and 
French  audiences  in  their  own  tongues.  An  omnivorous 
reader,  especially  of  history,  patristic  literature  and 
philosophy,  to  say  nothing  of  all  European  fiction,  he  is  a 
walking  combination  of  “Bartlett’s  Quotations,”  “Haydn’s 
Dictionary  of  Dates,”  “Lempriere’s  Classical  Dictionary,” 
and  “Cruden’s  Concordance.”  But  mathematics  terrify 
him,  and  I  suspect  him  of  finding  his  digits  very  useful  if 
he  is  confronted  with  a  small  sum  in  simple  addition. 
Decimals  are  as  baffling  to  him  as  they  were  to  Lord 
Randolph  Churchill.  When  Mr.  Basil  Mathews  joined  the 
Christian  World  staff  he  christened  Mr.  Jeffs  “Yahweh 
but  his  familiars  call  him  “’Enery,”  though  he  is  a  Cheva¬ 
lier  of  the  Legion  of  Honour,  and  an  ex-President  of  the 
International  Brotherhood  Council. 

Stories  of  Mr.  Harry  Jeffs  buzz  round  in  Free  Church 
circles.  There  are  legends  about  his  cigarette  smoking, 
which  is  believed  to  be  fabulously  heavy  because  he  scatters 
his  cigarette-ash  so  prodigally  over  his  own  clothing. 


202 


The  Best  I  Remember 


When  Mr.  Jeffs  went  to  Germany  with  Mr.  Allen  Baker’s 
famous  peace  party — dubbed  at  the  time  “The  Lager  Hope 
party  ”---an  English  bishop  asked  in  quiet  amazement  one 
evening  how  Mr.  Jeffs  managed  to  deposit  tobacco  ash  not 
only  on  his  waistcoat,  but  on  the  seat  of  his  trousers.  A 
witty  colleague  meeting  Mr.  Jeffs  in  black  frock-coat  well 
sprinkled  with  evidences  of  tobacco,  quietly  observed  : 
“Ah,  here  comes  Jeffs  in  his  broadcloth  and  ashes.”  Mr. 
Jeffs  has  a  delicate  gift  of  humour  himself.  “We  shall 
never,”  he  said  sententiously  on  one  occasion,  “restore  the 
prayer  meeting  until  we  get  rid  of  the  first  four  prayers.” 
“The  Sunday  School,”  he  remarked  on  another  occasion, 
“will  always  be  handicapped  until  a  Primary  Department 
is  established  for  superintendents  in  their  dotage.”  I  like 
best  his  remark  to  me  one  morning  when  he  stopped  me 
getting  into  an  underground  train  which  was  already  in 
motion  :  “No,  don’t  do  that,  Porritt.  I  would  sooner  be 
another  quarter  of  an  hour  late  at  the  office  any  morning 
than  a  corpse  for  all  time.”  To  a  friend  who  came  to  tell 
him  that  he  was  about  to  marry  again — to  a  lady  who  was 
an  old  friend:  “Well,  at  any  rate,”  responded  Jeffs,  “I 
hope  marriage  won’t  interfere  with  your  friendship.” 

Mr.  Basil  Mathews,  who  has  since  made  a  great  repu¬ 
tation  in  religious  circles  as  an  author  and  editor,  was  for 
some  years  a  colleague  of  mine  in  the  Christian  World 
office.  It  was  a  delightful  association.  Mr.  Mathews  is  a 
bfithe  spirit  with  a  well-developed  sense  of  humour,  and 
blessed  with  contagious  enthusiasm.  He  came  to  Fleet 
Street  direct  from  Oxford,  with  a  good  History  Schools 
degree,  an  engaging  personality  and,  that  chief  requisite 
for  a  journalist,  a  mind  open  to  all  the  breezes  that  blow. 
Genius  was  written  on  his  brow.  Like  Andrew  Riach,  in 
Sir  James  Barrie’s  first  story,  “Better  Dead,”  he  may  have 
written  it  there  himself,  but  it  was  there.  He,  too,  had 
big  ideas.  Unlike  Andrew  (who  “wanted  to”  start  a  new 


Journalistic  Confreres 


203 


Spectator,  on  the  lines  of  the  present  one,  but  not  so 
flippant  and  frivolous),  Mr.  Mathews  first  turned  his  eye 
on  juvenile  religious  literature.  “Give  me  your  children,” 
he  said  (as  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  says),  “let  me 
say  what  they  shall  read,  and  I  can  trust  you  with  them 
again  when  they  are  adults.”  What  Basil  Mathews  hated 
was  the  sloshy  sentimental  religiosity  that  oozed  out  of 
pietistic  books  written  for  boys  and  girls.  He  set  himself 
to  produce  something  better — something  that  combined 
robust  piety  and  vitalizing  religion,  something  breathing 
the  modern  spirit  of  the  Student  Christian  movement.  Mr. 
Mathews  found  his  fnetier  at  once,  and  the  tide  came  up  to 
meet  him.  Then  the  London  Missionary  Society  tempted 
him  away  from  Fleet  Street,  and  he  set  up  a  new  standard 
for  missionary  literature  by  the  magazines  and  books  he 
produced  as  that  society’s  literary  secretary.  Now  the  Con¬ 
ference  of  British  Missionary  Societies  (which  has  brought 
about  unity  of  spirit  and  an  amazing  body  of  co-operative 
effort  among  all  the  missionary  societies)  has  drawn  Mr. 
Mathews  into  its  service  to  create  “Outward  Bound,”  a 
magazine  designed  to  interest  the  man  in  the  street  in 
international  relationships  in  commercial,  moral,  literary 
and  religious  matters.  “Outward  Bound,”  which  i^  really 
an  organ  of  racial  solidarity,  is  the  first  magazine  in  the 
production  of  which  all  the  churches,  Anglican  and  Free, 
have  ever  had  a  common  interest,  and,  through  their  mis¬ 
sionary  societies,  a  joint  liability. 

Having  cut  a  new  furrow  in  literature,  Basil  Mathews 
found  he  possessed  gifts  as  a  platform  speaker  that  soon 
set  him  in  great  demand  all  over  the  country.  His  manner 
is  quite  his  own — we  used,  teasingly,  to  tell  him  it  was 
“a  quiet  and  ineffectual  style  ” — but  it  is  sufficiently  distinc¬ 
tive  to  captivate  people  weary  of  rhetoric.  Basil  Mathews 
went  out  to  Asia  Minor  to  go  over  the  footsteps  of  St.  Paul 
on  his  missionary  journeys  and  to  seek  local  colour  for  his 
“Paul  the  Dauntless  ”  (a  missionary  book  which  was  not 


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The  Best  I  Remember 


merely  written  for,  but  bought  by  Public  School  boys). 
While  he  was  away  one  of  his  former  colleagues,  a 
poetaster,  prepared  a  collection  of  light  verses  to  welcome 
the  voyager  home.  They  were  audacious  parodies  of 
Francis  Thompson,  Blake,  Browning,  Masefield,  Kit 
Marlowe  and  others.  Inevitably  they  were  given  the  title 
“A  Pot  of  Basil.”  One  parody  suggested  by  Tennyson 
gave  Mathews  great  joy  : 

Sankey,  and  one  long  prayer, 

And  after  that  the  plate ; 

But  may  there  be  no  maundering  from  the  chair 
When  I  orate. 

*  *  * 

For  though  behind  the  editorial  “  we  ” 

I  veil  my  face  so  meek, 

I  like  the  world  to  know  that  I  am  he 
When  I  get  up  to  speak. 

Only  three  copies  of  “A  Pot  of  Basil” — and  they  were 
typewritten — ever  saw  the  light,  and  even  the  author  of  the 
verses  does  not  possess  one. 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 


EVANGELISTS — GOOD  AND  BAD 

PROFESSIONAL  evangelism  almost  received  its  death¬ 
blow,  I  think,  by  the  Torrey-Alexander  mission.  We 
have  had  no  serious  attempt  to  revive  that  brass-bandy 
method  of  evangelism  since  that  ghastly  failure.  I  speak  of 
it  as  a  ghastly  failure  advisedly,  because  there  was  good 
reason  to  believe,  after  close  investigation,  that  the  Torrey- 
Alexander  Albert  Hall  mission  did  practically  nothing  to 
strengthen  the  churches  in  London.  Mr.  Stephen  Graham, 
writing  on  negro  preaching,  which  is  often  corybantic,  says 
that  it  is  not  a  good  thing  for  one’s  religion  to  be  converted 
once  a  week.  The  Torrey-Alexander  mission  touched  very 
few  of  the  “uncovenanted”;  it  just  titillated  the  jaded 
church-goers  and  gave  them  a  fresh  spasm  of  religious 
emotion.  On  the  other  hand,  Dr.  Torrey’s  appalling 
doctrine  of  hell  and  his  catalogue  of  manufactured  sins  dis¬ 
tressed  the  saner  young  ministers  in  the  Free  Churches, 
and  created  a  revolt  against  professional  evangelism. 

“Billy  ”  Sunday,  a  converted  baseball  player  who  took 
to  the  evangelistic  platform,  blazed  in  a  bright  white  light 
in  America  for  a  time.  Some  efforts  were  made  to  get 
Mr.  Sunday  to  undertake  a  campaign  in  England;  but  they 
fell  through.  One  objection  raised  was  that  his  picturesque 
baseball  slang,  which  is  part  of  his  stock-in-trade,  would 
be  unintelligible  in  England.  I  used  to  read  reports  of  his 
addresses  in  American  papers,  and  though  I  claim  to 
“speak  American,”  “Billy”  Sunday’s  vernacular  left  me 
guessing.  One  of  his  most  memorable  sayings  was  that 

205 


2o6 


The  Best  I  Remember 


“there  were  fashionable  women  walking  about  New  York 
who  were  not  wearing  enough  clothes  to  make  a  pair  of 
running  pants  for  a  humming  bird.”  But  Mr.  Sunday’s 
frank  commercialism  in  evangelism  would  have  been  his 
undoing  in  England,  even  if  his  rampageous  oratory  had 
not  revolted  sensitive  Christian  people. 

Not  all  the  American  evangelists  that  have  visited  Eng¬ 
land  have  failed  to  adorn  their  doctrine.  Mr.  D.  L. 
Moody’s  name  is  still  fragrant  amongst  us,  and  the  fruits 
of  his  work  here  are  not  all  reaped  yet.  Happily  we  have 
been  spared  any  visits  from  the  type  of  American  evangelist 
represented  by  Sam  Jones,  a  professional  revivalist  who 
had  a  great  vogue  in  the  United  States  at  one  time.  Sam 
Jones  was  as  vulgar  as  Broadway  at  night.  His  rhanners 
were  execrable  and  bad  taste  blazed  from  his  lips.  Once 
Sam  Jones  found  himself  engaged  for  a  week’s  mission 
in  a  Massachusetts  city  not  far  from  Boston.  On  the 
Saturday  night  he  waited  upon  the  minister — a  cultured 
young  man,  fresh  from  Yale  and  a  gentleman  to  the 
finger-tips.  Sam  Jones  inquired  about  the  church  and  its 
members,  found  that  they  attended  only  one  service  a 
Sunday,  did  not  send  their  children  to  Sunday  school, 
showed  no  zeal  for  the  prayer  meeting,  and  would  not  turn 
out  for  a  week-night  service.  Sam  expressed  his  disgust. 
“Well,”  he  said,  “if  I  had  a  church  like  this  I  guess  I’d 
hire  a  yellow-dog  to  come  and  be  sick  over  them.” 
“Exactly  what  I  have  done  !  ”  replied  the  young  minister. 

Some  years  ago  a  freakish  American  evangelist  named 
Jack  Cooke,  who  was  advertised  as  the  world’s  greatest  boy 
preacher,  came  to  England  and  held  evangelistic  services 
in  London  and  our  great  cities.  Jack  Cooke,  who  was 
about  fifteen,  had  certainly  an  amazing  flow  of  words.  His 
glibness  was  uncanny.  He  would  ask  his  audience  to 
select  him  a  text,  and  upon  it  he  would  extemporise  for  an 


Evangelists — Good  and  Bad  207 

hour.  I  heard  him  three  or  four  times  and  detected  his 
trick.  The  text  had  no  relation  to  the  subject.  After  two 
or  three  minutes  of  quite  commonplace  exposition  of  the 
text— which  any  Sunday-school  teacher  might  have 
equalled — he  gramophoned  a  long  discursive  address 
which  resolved  itself  into  a  fervid  evangelistic  appeal.  But 
his  success  was  sensational — especially  in  Birmingham, 
where  about  2,500  people  professed  conversion  under  his 
influence.  The  promoters  of  the  Jack  Cooke  mission  asked 
for  the  use  of  Carrs  Lane  Chapel  for  a  meeting  of  the  con¬ 
verts.  Dr.  Jowett  conceded  it  without  hesitation.  Each 
convert  was  asked  to  indicate  on  a  card  which  Birmingham 
church  he  or  she  would  like  to  be  associated  with.  The 
vast  majority  elected  to  join  Carrs  Lane.  Dr.  Jowett,  con¬ 
fronted  with  about  2,000  candidates  for  membership,  met 
his  deacons  and  earnestly  begged  them  to  face  up  to  the 
responsibility.  It  was  essential,  he  felt,  that  all  the  candi¬ 
dates  should  be  visited  and  tested  as  to  the  sincerity  of 
their  desire  for  church  membership.  The  task  was 
tremendous,  but  it  was  undertaken.  As  a  result  of  this 
winnowing  by  inquiry,  about  thirty  of  the  converts  were 
passed  on  to  Dr.  Jowett  for  final  examination.  The  net 
result  was  that  about  seven  were  admitted  to  the  fellowship 
of  the  church — a  startling  revelation  of  the  value  of  sensa¬ 
tional  evangelistic  methods. 

The  need  for  sane  evangelism  remains,  but  even  more 
urgent  is  the  necessity  laid  upon  the  churches  to  make 
themselves  efficient  as  teaching  institutions — as  teachers  of 
simple  elemental  Christianity.  Three  books,  born  of  the 
war,  proved  the  urgency  of  this  consideration — ^Mr.  Donald 
Hankey’s  “A  Student  in  Arms,”  “The  Church  in  the 
Furnace  ”  by  a  group  of  Anglican  chaplains,  and  Dr.  D.  S. 
Cairns’s  synthesis  of  the  data  gathered  by  the  Y.M.C.A. 
and  published  under  the  title  “Religion  in  the  Army.” 
All  three  books  came  from  devoted  churchmen  and  made 


2o8 


The  Best  I  Remember 


the  same  humiliating  confession  that  the  Church  had 
utterly  failed  in  her  mission  to  give  the  young  men  of 
England  any  clear  definite  notion  of  what  Christianity 
means.  The  soldier  looked  upon  it  all  as  “a  ruck  of  obso¬ 
lete  theories  and  antiquated  riddles.*’  The  majority  of 
the  soldiers  in  our  armies  had  for  long  or  short  periods 
been  scholars  in  the  Sunday  schools.  Yet  the  net  result 
of  the  teaching  given  there  was  a  total  ignorance  of  the 
elements  of  Christianity.  Even  more  disturbing — at  least 
to  Anglicans  who  pin  their  faith  to  doctrinal  teaching  in 
the  elementary  schools — was  that  neither  the  provided 
schools  nor  the  voluntary  schools  had  made  any  lasting 
impression  upon  the  soldiers’  minds  by  the  religious  in¬ 
struction  given  in  the  public  elementary  schools.  The  all¬ 
round  failure  of  Church  and  school  as  teachers  of 
Christianity  was  one  of  the  revelations  of  the  war.  At  the 
risk  of  appearing  egotistical  I  must  say  that  it  came  to  me 
as  no  surprise  at  all. 

During  the  seventeen  years  that  I  was  superintendent 
of  a  Sunday  school  in  South  London — which  was  regarded 
by  the  Sunday  School  Union  as  a  model  of  its  kind — I 
made  it  a  practice,  Sunday  by  Sunday,  to  catechize  every 
new  scholar  that  came  into  the  school.  Those  catechizings 
left  some  startling  conclusions  on  my  mind.  I  found,  e.g., 
that  in  only  a  small  proportion  of  working  class  homes  do 
the  parents  even  possess  a  Bible ;  that  in  an  even  smaller 
proportion  do  the  parents  even  give  their  little  ones  the 
slightest  religious  teaching,  and  that  in  the  vast  majority 
of  cases  the  children  were  not  even  taught  to  pray  at  their 
mothers’  knees.  Most  of  them  had  the  vaguest  notion  as 
to  when  and  where  Jesus  Christ  lived  and  died.  I  seldom 
found  a  child  knowing  that  the  current  year  dated  from  the 
birth  of  Jesus.  They  knew  the  legend  of  the  Shepherds, 
and  in  a  blundering  kind  of  way,  if  I  asked  why  Jesus 
came  into  the  world,  they  would  reply,  “To  die  for  our 
sins.’’  They  could  add  nothing  whatever  to  that  bald 


Evangelists — Good  and  Bad  209 

Statement.  They  knew  more  about  the  miracles  than  they 
did  about  the  parables;  of  the  general  teaching  of  Jesus 
upon  life  and  conduct  they  were  even  more  ignorant  than 
about  the  parables.  Time  after  time  I  was  in  despair  over 
this  appalling  failure  of  home,  day-school  and  church. 
At  last  I  made  it  a  principle  of  the  school,  and  incessantly 
urged  it  upon  my  coadjutors,  that  whatever  else  might  go 
untaught  we  should  concentrate  on  the  synoptic  gospels, 
and  strain  every  nerve  to  see  that  no  scholar  went  through 
our  school  without  having  imprinted  on  his  or  her  mind  a 
clear  outline  of  what  Jesus  was,  what  He  did  and  what 
He  taught.  And  I  think  that  is  the  task  the  Church  has  to 
set  before  itself  in  this  post-war  age. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 


MINISTERIAL  HUMORISTS 

The  idea  that  evangelists  and  preachers  are  dull  dogs  is 
quite  erroneous.  Dr.  R.  J.  Campbell  used  to  love  telling 
“drunk  ”  stories,  and  Dr.  Campbell  Morgan  is  a  very  lively 
travelling  companion.  His  imitation  of  a  Chinese  idol, 
effected  by  contorting  his  very  mobile  face  and  hanging 
a  small  paper  knife  from  his  lips,  is,  I  am  told,  a  highly 
diverting  trick.  His  stories  used  to  keep  D.  L.  Moody  up 
late  at  night  at  Northfield.  Dr.  F.  B.  Meyer  again, 
Puritan  of  Puritans,  has  a  highly  developed  sense  of 
humour,  and  on  occasion  can  keep  a  company  of  friends 
in  a  very  mirthful  mood.  I  remember  coming  back  from 
Birmingham  by  a  late  Saturday  night  train  with  Dr. 
Meyer,  Mr.  Silvester  Horne,  Rev.  Thomas  Law  and  Mr. 
Fred  Horne. 

We  had  been  attending  the  foundation-stone  laying 
of  the  Digbeth  Institute,  and  we  travelled  as  far  as 
Rugby  by  a  market  train.  Dr.  Meyer  was  in  a  happy 
mood  and  had  us  in  a  continuous  roar  of  laughter  by 
recounting  some  of  his  odd  travelling  experiences.  At 
Rugby  we  joined  the  London  mail  train,  and  the  compart¬ 
ment  coaches  being  crowded,  the  guard  put  us  into  the 
restaurant  saloon.  Dr.  Meyer  continued  his  racy  reminis¬ 
cences,  and  we  were  laughing  heartily  when  the  guard 
passed  through  the  saloon.  The  restaurant  conductor,  who 
evidently  resented  our  presence  and  had  been  reluctant  to 
get  us  any  coffee,  stopped  the  guard  to  expostulate  with 
him  for  having  put  us  in  the  car.  His  tone,  was  very 
contemptuous.  Pointing  to  our  group  he  told  the  guard  : 

210 


Ministerial  Humorists 


2II 


“This  won’t  do.  You’d  no  right  to  put  ’em  in  here. 
It’s  turning  the  car  into  a  regular  public-’ouse.”  No  one 
enjoyed  the  joke  better  than  Dr.  Meyer. 

Though  very  few  professional  evangelists  have  ever 
attracted  me,  I  have  a  very  tender  feeling  and  a  very  high 
regard  for  Gipsy  Smith.  He  is  sui  generis  and  a  man  of 
fine  qualities  of  heart  and  spirit.  His  sincerity  is  beyond 
question,  and  he  has  none  of  that  harsh  censoriousness 
which  always  repels  me  in  the  ordinary  type  of  evangelist. 
Gipsy  vSmith  is  a  pure  Romany.  It  explains  the  poetry 
that  oozes  from  him.  And  he  is  proud  of  his  vagrant 
ancestry.  He  recalls  zestfully  his  boyhood  days  in  a 
caravan — when  he  sold  clothes-pegs  from  door  to  door  in 
East  Anglian  villages — and  takes  as  much  pride  in  them  as 
a  blue-blooded  aristocrat  does  his  sixteen  quarterings.  He 
has  built  himself  a  home  at  Cherry  Hinton  just  outside 
Cambridge,  and  from  his  dining-room  window  he  can  see 
the  vSpot,  across  the  fields,  where  his  father’s  van  used  to 
be  pitched. 

Gipsy  Smith  at  home  is  just  as  mesmeric  a  per¬ 
sonality  as  Gipsy  Smith  addressing  a  big  evangelistic 
meeting.  A  day  I  spent  with  him  in  his  garden  at  Cherry 
Hinton  comes  freshly  back  to  memory.  All  the  birds  knew 
him  and  had  no  sort  of  fear  of  him.  He  hooked  a  mother 
bird  off  her  brood  in  a  nest  built  in  one  of  the  rose-covered 
arches,  and  while  Gipsy  played  with  the  fledglings 
the  hen  bird,  quite  unperturbed,  sat  on  a  bough  a  yard 
away.  As  we  sat  smoking — at  least  I  was  smoking ;  Gipsy 
Smith  has  no  vices — Gipsy  ejaculated,  “Hallo,  here’s 
an  old  friend  of  mine  come  back.”  It  was  a  chaffinch 
that  had  forsaken  Gipsy’s  garden  that  year,  but  was  pay¬ 
ing  a  visit  to  old  scenes.  From  his  jacket  pocket  Gipsy 
produced  a  scrap  of  food,  and  in  a  minute  or  two  the  bird 
was  perched  on  his  wrist  eating  from  his  hand.  With  a 
low  whistle  Gipsy  Smith  drew  the  birds  around  him  very 


212 


The  Best  1  Remember 


much  like  the  old  man  who,  before  the  war,  used  to  feed 
the  sparrows  in  the  Tuileries  gardens  in  Paris.  And  all  the 
while  he  talked  to  them  as  St.  Francis  preached  to  the 
birds  at  Assisi. 

For  many  years  Gipsy  Smith  was  the  missioner  of  the 
National  Free  Church  Council,  which  made  all  his  engage¬ 
ments  and  took  all  responsibility  for  the  finances  of  his 
missions — paying  him  a  fixed  salary.  This  was  an  excel¬ 
lent  arrangement  for  the  Free  Church  Council,  and  an 
especially  good  one  for  Gipsy  Smith,  who  thus  avoided 
all  the  suspicion  of  profiteering  in  the  gospel  which  be- 
slimes  so  much  professional  evangelism.  Even  his  Ameri¬ 
can  evangelistic  campaigns  were  under  the  segis  of  the 
Free  Church  Council — a  fact  which  takes  out  any  sting 
that  might  have  lurked  in  a  good  story  of  one  of  Gipsy’s 
Atlantic  voyages.  Following  his  inveterate  habit  of  taking 
any  and  every  opportunity  for  “personal  dealing  ”  with 
anyone  with  whom  he  might  be  travelling,  Gipsy  talked 
to  some  of  the  ladies  who  w^ere  voyagers  on  the  liner. 
None  of  them  resented  his  earnest  concern  about  their 
souls.  He  has  “a  wav  with  him  ”  which  disarmed  them. 
One  of  them,  a  well-known  American  vaudeville  actress, 
asked  a  travelling  companion  of  the  evangelist  who  the  dark 
gentleman  with  mesmeric  eyes  was.  “That  is  Gipsy 
Smith,  the  famous  evangelist,”  she  was  told.  “Gipsy 
Smith!”  replied  the  vaudeville  actress.  “Gipsy  Smith. 
Oh,  yes,  I  remember  now.  Of  course  !  I  followed  him 
one  week  in  Omaha.  Say,  he’s  a  dandy  artist.  Fie  hadn’t 
left  a  dollar  in  the  town.” 

One  day  Gipsy  Smith  was  lunching  at  the  National 
Liberal  Club  with  a  little  group  of  friends,  and  was  telling 
us  some  of  his  remarkable  experiences  at  some  mission  he 
had  been  conducting  in  the  Midlands.  The  late  Rev. 
Thomas  Law,  the  secretary  of  the  National  Free  Church 
Council,  was  one  of  the  party.  So  was  Sir  Henry  Hollo¬ 
way  and,  I  think,  Rev.  Silvester  Horne.  One  of  the  old 


Ministerial  Humorists 


213 


waiters,  a  veteran  who  is  forgiven  many  liberties,  was 
serving  at  our  table.  On  his  way  to  the  kitchen  he  passed 
another  waiter;  and  in  a  far-travelling  whisper  remarked  : 
“I’ve  got  a  blooming  Bible  class  at  my  table.” 

A  very  real  and  very  delightful  cameraderie  exists 
among  journalists,  but  I  doubt  if  it  equals  in  genuine  good 
fellowship  the  freemasonry  that  marks  the  relationships  of 
Free  Church  ministers.  There  are,  a  cynic  has  said,  still 
three  sexes — men,  women  and  parsons.  Circumstances 
have  flung  me  among  ministers  for  over  twenty-five  years 
and  my  parson  friends  are  legion.  I  cherish  these  friend¬ 
ships  because,  with  a  few  rare  exceptions,  I  have  found 
ministers  to  be  men  of  warm  sympathy,  kind  instincts  and 
genuine  brotherliness.  Whether  it  is  in  the  smoke-room 
or  the  golf  links  or  on  country  walks,  I  find  ministers  the 
liveliest  of  companions,  varied  in  their  interests,  keen  in 
their  enthusiasms  and  sincere  in  their  attachments.  In 
mufti  the  average  parson  is  the  very  best  of  good  fellows, 
delighting  in  healthy  humour  and  clean  mirth.  Almost 
the  happiest  recollection  of  my  travelling  days  is  that  of  a 
ten-day  voyage  across  the  Atlantic  with  a  party  of  fifty 
ministers  en  route  to  the  International  Congregational 
Council  at  Boston.  The  ocean  journey  was  a  sacrament 
of  real  fellowship,  and  at  the  end  of  the  voyage  a  message 
was  brought  by  one  of  the  ship’s  officers  that  the  other 
passengers  wished  the  ministers  to  know  that  they  had 
added  to  the  gaiety  of  the  trip  by  their  good  humour,  good 
sportsmanship  and  good  fellowship. 

Though  that  voyage  was  made  in  midsummer  the 
Atlantic  was  very  unfriendly  one  day,  and  even  the  sturdy 
Adriatic  pitched  viciously  in  a  rough  sea.  One  of  the 
stewards  jokingly  attributed  the  gale  to  the  presence  of  so 
many  parsons  on  board.  Thereupon  one  of  the  ministers 
— I  believe  the  wag  was  Rev.  J.  A.  Patten,  M.A.,  M.C., 
of  Ipswich,  who  developed  his  sense  of  humour  in  the 


214 


The  Best  I  Remember 


trenches  in  Flanders — concocted  a  good  story.  A  plot  had 
been  hatched — so  the  story  went — among  the  crew  and 
steerage  passengers  to  break  into  the  state-room  of  the 
greatest  of  all  the  preachers  on  board,  and  at  dead  of 
night  conduct  him  to  the  top  deck  and  thence  cast  him 
into  the  sea,  as  an  encouragement  to  the  others.  That 
night — ^the  story  continued — ^the  state-room  door  of  every 
minister  on  the  ship  was  found  to  be  securely  locked  on 
the  inside. 

The  Press  Golfing  Society  came  into  existence  through 
a  match  which  I  organized  between  journalistic  golfers  and 
Free  Church  ministers.  It  was  played  at  Totteridge,  and 
was  a  festival  of  high  fun.  As  far  as  my  recollection  goes 
Lord  Riddell — ^^then  Mr.  George  Riddell — played  against 
Rev.  Silvester  Horne,  Sir  Emsley  Carr  against  Rev.  J.  H. 
Shakespeare,  and  Mr.  Lincoln  Springfield  of  London 
Opinion  against  Dr.  Griffith  Jones.  Altogether  about 
twelve  pairs  were  started  off  the  first  tee  by  Harry  Vardon. 
The  pressmen  found  the  ministers  both  fine  sporting 
golfers  and  very  good  fellows,  and  at  the  end  of  the  day 
ministers  and  journalists  agreed  that  they  must  make  the 
match  an  annual  event.  The  ministers  already  had  a 
vagrant  society  of  their  own  with  a  challenge  cup  for 
which  they  competed  each  year.  This  gave  the  journalists 
the  germinal  idea  of  founding  a  society  of  their  own,  and 
I  found  myself  installed  as  first  secretary.  The  Press  v. 
Pulpit  match  went  on  uninterruptedly  year  by  year  until 
the  war,  and  it  has  since  been  revived  by  Dr.  Robert 
Donald. 

The  mingling  of  pressmen  and  ministers  served  the 
excellent  purpose  of  bringing  men  of  two  professions, 
whose  understanding  is  not  very  close,  into  intimate  rela¬ 
tionships.  Each,  I  think,  discovered  unexpected  qualities 
in  the  other  through  their  friendly  rivalry  on  the  golf 
course. 


Ministerial  Humorists  215 

One  of  the  matches  between  Pulpit  v.  Press  was 
arranged  for  a  winter’s  day  at  the  old  Tooting  Bee  course. 
Three  inches  of  snow  had  fallen  during  the  night,  but 
nine  pairs  of  Spartans  arrived  with  golf  clubs  and  prepared 
to  slog  their  way  round  the  snow-bound  course.  Red  balls 
were  procured,  and  the  match  couples  started  in  turn. 
Golf  in  deep  snow  is  a  slow  and  precarious  pursuit,  and 
only  one  pair  managed  to  get  round  the  whole  eighteen 
holes.  One  player  lost  seven  balls^ — it  was  the  day  of  the 
ninepenny  “gutty” — and  the  demand  for  new  supplies  of 
red  balls  overwhelmed  the  club  professional.  At  one  hole 
a  ministerial  golfer  found  himself — so  it  was  said — ^in  a 
deep-faced  bunker  over  whose  sandy  floor  three  inches  of 
snow  was  lying.  He  was  just  playing  his  seventeenth 
when  his  opponent  gave  up  the  hole.  Even  if  the  golf 
that  day  was  beneath  criticism,  the  journalists  and  the 
ministers  all  vowed  that  they  had  enjoyed  it.  I  believe 
they  had — if  the  laughter  occasioned  by  the  vicissitudes  of 
the  players  was  any  criterion. 

Nonconformity — even  the  Nonconformist  ministry — has 
made  larger  contributions  to  English  sport  than  it  com¬ 
monly  gets  credit  for.  Dr.  R.  F.  Horton,,  of  Hampstead, 
was  a  fine  oarsman  when  he  was  at  Oxford.  He  stroked 
the  New  College  to  the  head  of  the  river.  Rev.  R.  J. 
Wells,  the  Secretary  of  the  Congregational  Union,  ex¬ 
celled  in  both  cricket  and  Rugby  football.  He  played  in 
the  Hampshire  cricket  team  for  several  seasons,  and  he 
represented  England  in  Rugby  football.  Rev.  Edward 
P.  Powell,  one  of  the  Congregational  Moderators,  won  his 
“blue”  on  the  running  path  when  he  was  an  under¬ 
graduate  at  Cambridge.  Dr.  J.  H.  Shakespeare,  Secretary 
of  the  Baptist  Union,  used  to  play  a  fine  game  at  golf, 
though  the  best  ministerial  golfer  of  his  time  was  Dr.  D.  L. 
Ritchie,  Principal  of  Nottingham  Congregational  College, 
who  was  rated  at  “scratch,”  and  for  a  time,  I  think,  was 

o 


2I6 


The  Best  I  Remember 


a  “plus”  man.  Rev.  F.  W.  J.  Merlin,  of  Sutton  Coldfield, 
is  now,  I  imagine,  the  ministerial  golfer  with  the  lowest 
handicap.  He  is  also,  I  think,  the  minister  with  the 
longest  stream  of  university  degrees  after  his  name  in  the 
“Congregational  Year  Book.” 

The  English  pulpit  lost  one  of  its  merriest  souls  when 
Rev.  John  McNeill  finally  went  to  America.  His  gaiety 
of  spirit  was  infectious.  He  could  no  more  keep  humour 
out  of  his  sermons  than  Dean  Swift  could  keep  dirt  out 
of  his  love  letters.  In  early  manhood  John  McNeill  had 
been  a  porter  on  a  Scotch  railway  station.  Perhaps  it  was 
there  that  he  acquired  his  passion  for  a  “crack.”  For  a 
time  John  McNeill  was  a  peregrinating  evangelist,  and  the 
nomad  habit  became  second  nature  to  him.  He  was 
always  on  the  move.  I  have  lost  all  count  of  the  pastorates 
he  held. 

Just  as  soon  as  he  seemed  to  have  settled  in  a 
church  he  left  for  another.  Nothing  would  make  him 
“stay  put,”  as  Americans  say.  Once  when  playing 
golf  at  Liverpool,  his  ball  found  a  sand  bunker  with  a  face 
like  a  cliff.  He  got  his  niblick,  played  one,  two,  three, 
four,  five  shots,  and  the  ball  was  still  in  the  sandpit.  Then 
he  pulled  out  a  handkerchief,  wiped  his  brow,  and,  turning 
to  his  opponent,  said  :  “Good,  John  McNeill’s  got  a  settled 
job  at  last.” 

'  I  think  it  was  John  McNeill  who  invented  the  story  of 
Prof.  James  Stalker  being  met  by  a  friend  walking  down  a 
street  in  Aberdeen  one  morning  during  term.  Dr.  Stalker 
had  just  accepted  a  professorship  at  the  Free  Church 
College,  then  very  short  of  students.  “Now,  who,”  cried 
his  friend,  “would  have  thought  of  meeting  you  here.  Dr. 
Stalker,  at  this  time  of  the  day  ?  I  thought  you  would  have 
been  busy  with  your  class.” 

“Yes,”  replied  Dr.  Stalker,  “I  should  have  been,  but 
my  class  has  got  a  gumboil.” 


Ministerial  Humorists 


217 


The  last  time  I  heard  of  John  McNeill  he  was  making 
his  way  steadily — holding  pastorates  en  route — from  the 
Atlantic  seaboard  to  the  Pacific  slopes  of  the  United 
States.  He  may  be  on  the  return  journey  now.  He 
always  stays  just  long  enough  to  leave  the  happiest  of 
memories  behind  him.  The  call  of  something  new  is  in 
his  blood — it  is  a  microbe,  I  imagine,  that  has  not  been 
isolated. 


CHAPTER  XXXV 


RANDOM  RECOLLECTIONS 

The  emergence  of  the  woman  preacher  is  an  event  of  the 
last  ten  years,  though  Congregationalism  had  a  woman 
pastor,  Miss  Hatty  Baker,  in  charge  of  a  Sussex  church 
twenty  years  ago,  and  a  very  scholarly  German  lady  held 
a  Unitarian  pastorate  at  Nottingham  a  little  later.  Miss 
Maude  Roy  den’s  great  popularity  has  given  a  fillip  to  the 
woman  in  the  pulpit  movement,  and  women  students  are 
making  their  way  in  steadily  increasing  numbers  into  the 
Free  Church  theological  colleges,  especially  in  London. 
It  is  curious  that  the  opposition  to  women  in  the  pulpit 
comes  mainly  from  women.  I  find  many  women  have  an 
instinctive  prejudice  against  women  speakers.  I  remember 
Miss  Frances  Willard  saying  that  she  had  to  encounter 
this  prejudice  in  the  ’nineties.  Miss  Willard  was  one  of 
the  best  woman  speakers  I  have  heard.  She  was  a  natural 
orator,  had  a  beautiful  voice,  the  face  of  a  saint,  and  a 
certain  occasional  pungency  of  phrase  that  always  “got 
there.”  Her  remark  that  “the  worst  of  women  is  that  they 
are  not  gentlemen  ”  is  a  classic.  The  late  Miss  Mary 
McArthur  had  a  polished  grace  that  captivated  her  hearers, 
and  Mrs.  Philip  Snowden  has  every  art  and  trick  of  oratory 
at  her  command;  but  of  all  the  women  speakers  I  have 
heard  Miss  Margaret  Bondfield  is  the  most  effective.  Her 
oratory  is  artless,  but  she  has  natural  style,  real  passion, 
and  she  gets  au  rapport  with  a  large  audience  from  her  first 
sentence.  If  the  deep  religious  dynamic  that  moves  her 
does  not  find  expression  in  her  actual  words,  her  hearers 
somehow  feel  that  it  is  there,  giving  reality  to  her  pas- 

218 


Random  Recollections 


219 


sionate  humanitarianism.  Miss  Bondfield  is  to  my  mind 
the  finest  orator  the  Labour  movement  has  produced,  and  if 
ever  she  gets  into  Parliament  she  ought  to  be  able  to  sway 
the  House  of  Commons.  Another  very  great  woman 
speaker — though  she  seeks  no  popularity — is  Mrs.  Bram- 
well  Booth  of  the  Salvation  Army.  Her  gift  of  speech  is 
a  natural  endowment,  and  what  carries  conviction  to  her 
hearers  is  her  own  conquering  sincerity. 

I  am  often  puzzled  to  account  for  the  “  run  ”  that  a 
particular  text  seems  to  enjoy  for  a  period,  but  I  have 
often  noted  this  peculiar  phenomenon.  Some  years  ago  a 
Congregational  church  in  the  Midlands  had  six  preachers 
in  its  pulpit  on  six  successive  Sundays,  and  four  of  the 
ministers  preached  on  “the  second  mile.”  One  Sunday 
in  the  same  church  I  heard  two  preachers — one  in  the 
morning  and  the  other  in  the  evening — preach  on  “  O  that 
I  knew  where  I  should  find  Him.”  Quite  recently  on 
successive  Sundays  two  preachers  discoursed  on  “As  the 
hart  panteth  after  the  water  brooks.”  But  I  could  cite  a 
dozen  instances  of  these  inexplicable  runs  on  texts.  The 
text  “As  the  hart  panteth  ”  recalls  a  story  of  an  Armenian 
student  at  New  College  who,  in  sermon '  class,  took  that 
text.  He  rendered  it  “As  the  heart  pants  after  the  water 
brooks,”  and  in  announcing  his  divisions  said  he  wished 
to  speak  (i)  on  the  pants  of  the  Psalmist,  (2)  on  pants  in 
general,  and  (3)  on  some  Free  Church  pants. 

Of  all  preachers  I  ever  heard.  Dr.  James  Stalker  is 
the  one  whose  sermons  fasten  themselves  most  indelibly  on 
my  mind.  I  can  remember  quite  distinctly  the  whole  argu¬ 
ment  of  the  sermon  he  preached  when  I  first  heard  him 
nearly  thirty  years  ago.  Since  then  I  have  heard  him  only 
twice,  but  I  remember  those  two  sermons  vividly  still. 
The  explanation  is  simple.  Dr.  Stalker  has  a  wonderful 
gift  for  divisions.  And  when  he  has  set  out  his  divisions 


220 


The  Best  I  Remember 


they  are  fixed  in  his  hearers’  minds.  Take  as  an  example 
his  treatment  of  temptation.  As  regards  temptation,  all 
men,  he  says,  are  divisible  into  five  groups,  like  Con¬ 
tinental  political  parties.  In  the  “centre  ”  are  the  tempted; 
on  the  “left  centre”  the  tempted  who  have  fallen;  on  the 
“left  ”  the  tempted  who  have  fallen  and  are  tempting 
others;  on  the  “right  centre”  are  the  tempted  who  have 
resisted  their  temptation;  on  the  “right”  are  the  tempted 
who  have  resisted  temptation  and  are  helping  others  to 
resist  their  temptations.  We  are  all  of  us  in  one  of 
the  categories.  Which  ?  A  sermon  like  that  is  quite 
unforgettable. 

Humour  seldom  crept  into  the  melancholy  Tribunal 
Courts  that  administered  the  Compulsory  Service  Act 
during  the  war.  I  only  heard  of  one  case.  A  con¬ 
scientious  objector  who  had  done  three  terms  of  imprison¬ 
ment  in  Wormwood  Scrubbs,  appeared  for  the  fourth  time. 
The  chairman,  who  thought  the  mart’s  objection  was  really 
conscientious  (and,  as  such,  a  title  to  exemption),  tried  to 
persuade  him  to  do  some  non-combatant  work  in  the  army. 
“We  do  not  want  to  send  you  back  to  Wormwood 
Scrubbs,”  he  said.  “Won’t  you  go  to  France  for,  say, 
clerical  or  labour  duty  ?  ” 

“No,  sir,”  replied  the  C.O.  with  adamantine  firmness, 
“  I  prefer  the  Wormwood  to  the  Gaul !  ” 

A  tribunal  with  a  sense  of  humour  would  have  let  him 
off. 

The  printer’s  devil  has  never  really  been  given  his  due. 
Nowadays  he  is  often  a  girl,  for  the  piquant  little  imps  who 
carried  “copy”  from  the  editorial  office  to  the  printing 
office  have  been  lured  by  higher  wages  into  fresh  woods 
and  pastures  new.  As  a  combination  of  perky  impudence 
and  sheer  ignorance  the  old-time  printer’s  devil  was  sui 
generis.  I  remember  one  bright  spark  of  a  lad  of  sixteen 


Random  Recollections 


221 


who  thirty  years  ago  used  to  collect  my  morning’s  copy 
at  House  of  Commons’  Committees,  and  dispatch  it  by  the 
afternoon  train  to  Manchester.  One  morning  I  had  an 
engagement  at  Westminster  Abbey,  and  this  boy  was  sent 
there  to  get  my  copy.  I  waited  for  him,  but  as  he  did  not 
arrive  I  set  off  to  take  my  own  copy  to  Fleet  Street.  A 
little  way  from  the  Abbey  I  met  the  boy  wandering  aim¬ 
lessly  about  Parliament  Street.  He  told  me  that  he 
“didn’t  know  where  Westminster  Abbey  was”;  as  we 
rode  on  an  omnibus  through  the  Strand  he  nudged  my 
arm  and,  pointing  across  the  road,  said:  “There’s 
Short’s.”  He  didn’t  know  where  Westminster  Abbey 
was,  but  he  wanted  me  to  understand  that  he  knew  the 
famous  old  wineshop. 

My  own  memory  occasionally  plays  me  tricks,  but  it 
has  never  let  me  down  so  dismally  as  that  of  a  Quaker 
gentleman  I  meet  occasionally,  who  knew  John  Bright 
intimately,  and,  as  a  boy,  often  went  walks  with  the  great 
Victorian  orator.  Once  as  they  passed  the  Crimean  monu¬ 
ment  together  John  Bright  stopped  to  read  the  inscription 
— his  own  undying  words.  “The  angel  of  death  is  hover¬ 
ing  over  the  land;  almost  I  can  hear  the  beating  of  his 
wings.”  John  Bright  told  his  young  companion  how  the 
idea  of  the  beating  of  the  wings  came  to  him  through  read¬ 
ing  the  lines  of  an  American  poet.  But  the  boy  forgot  the 
name  of  the  poet,  and  has  never  been  able  to  recall  to  whom 
John  Bright  said  he  owed  his  inspiration.  Could  it  have 
been  William  Cullen  Bryant’s  “To  a  Waterfowl  ”  ? 


CHAPTER  XXXVI 


A  GREAT  ORGANIZER 

IDO  not  even  qualify  the  word  great  in  applying  it  to  the 
Rev.  Thomas  Law.  As  an  organizing  secretary  he  was 
really  and  truly  great.  'When  the  Free  Church  Council 
came  to  birth  at  Manchester  in  1893  Thomas  Law  was  an 
obscure  Free  Methodist  minister  at  Bradford,  who  had 
worked  out  a  novel  scheme  of  Free  Church  parishes  and 
made  the  scheme  work.  He  was  appointed  organizing 
secretary  of  the  new  Free  Church  federation  movement. 
Dr.  Mackennal  was  the  responsible  secretary  and  was  to 
be  the  real  leader  of  the  federation.  Law  was  merely  ex¬ 
pected  to  do  the  clerical  work  and  the  rough  spade-work 
of  organizing.  But  he  had  a  marshal’s  baton  in  his  knap¬ 
sack,  and  in  a  year  or  two  he  was  really  the  pivotal  figure 
of  the  whole  movement.  He  had  ideas  and  could  bring 
them  into  action.  Some  of  them  were  grandiose,  and  he 
had  almost  a  pitiable  faith  in  mass  meetings  and  resolu¬ 
tions.  But  for  all  that  he  kept  the  Council  busy  with 
schemes  which  brought  the  scattered  forces  of  Noncon¬ 
formity  into  something  like  a  solid  phalanx.  A  little 
pomposity  of  manner — which  did  not  reflect  any  real 
pretentiousness  of  mind,  or  spirit — helped  Thomas  Law 
to  make  a  strong  impression  in  unexpected  quarters.  He 
found  a  way  into  Government  departments  and  whips’ 
rooms — through  doors  usually  very  closely  guarded — and 
under  his  fostering  care  the  Free  Church  Council  (which 
was  never  as  strong  in  the  provincial  areas  as  Law  repre¬ 
sented  it  to  be)  became  a  formidable  focus  of  Nonconformist 
opinion.  After  Law’s  death,  but  not  till  then,  it  was  real- 

222 


223 


A  Great  Organizer 

ized  that  he  was  the  deus  ex  machina,  for  with  Thomas 
Law  withdrawn  the  momentum  of  the  movement  swiftly 
spent  itself  and  its  vigour  has  not  yet  even  been  completely 
regained. 

Thomas  Law’s  life  was  almost  as  tragic  as  his  death. 
He  consistently  overworked  for  years,  and  did  so  when 
his  bad  health  was  crying  to  him  to  rest  and  recuperate. 
A  digestive  malady  gave  him  constant  and  acute  pain  and 
robbed  him  of  sleep.  Drugs  were  prescribed  him  and  he 
came  to  rely  upon  them  to  keep  him  going.  Then  neuras¬ 
thenia  claimed  him  as  a  victim.  An  enforced  rest  at  Mar¬ 
gate,  where  he  stayed  for  months  alone — and  of  all  things 
on  earth  Thomas  Law  hated  solitariness — did  him  some 
physical  good  but  depressed  him  mentally.  He  returned 
to  his  work  but  collapsed  again,  flew  to  the  old  drug  for 
relief,  only  to  find  that  its  efficacy  was  gone.  Then  it  was 
broken  to  him,  none  too  gently,  that  he  would  have  to 
resign  his  secretaryship.  The  thought  of  living  without 
the  Free  Church  Council,  which  was  the  life  of  his  life, 
was  unendurable.  I  knew  him  intimately  all  through  his 
association  with  the  Free  Church  Council — I  was  present 
at  its  inauguration.  I  travelled  hundreds  of  miles  with 
him,  stayed  with  him  at  the  same  hotels  and  lunched  with 
him  two  or  three  days  a  week  for  years.  I  never  saw  him 
touch  alcohol.  He  was  uncharitably  judged  himself,  but 
I  never  knew  a  man  more  charitable  in  his  own  judgments 
of  others.  He  found  some  excuse  for  saying  a  good  word 
for  everybody.  Nothing  delighted  him  more  than  to  give 
a  promising  youngster  an  opportunity  to  win  distinction. 
He  used  to  say  in  his  somewhat  bumptious  way  that  he 
had  given  dozens  of  men  an  opportunity  to  make  “national 
reputations  ’’ ;  but  he  appreciated  the  joke  when  some  of 
us  went  to  him  once  and  gravely  suggested  that  he  should 
organize  a  mass  meeting  of  Free  Church  leaders  in  the 
Albert  Hall,  to  be  addressed  by  himself  on  “How  I  made 
you  all.’’  His  well  of  human  kindness  overflowed.  I 


224 


The  Best  I  Remember 


shall  always  cherish  his  memory  as  a  man  who  fought  hard 
against  fearful  odds. 

What  saved  Thomas  Law  from  the  wounds  that  some 
of  his  enemies  would  have  inflicted  upon  him  was  a  certain 
pachydermatous  imperturbability.  It  was  not  that  he  was 
insensitive,  but  that  he  would  not  show  any  sensitiveness. 
Really  he  rather  enjoyed  being  “ragged  ”  by  his  intimates 
— as  if  to  prove  that  his  pomposity  did  come  off.  I  once, 
I  am  afraid,  hurt  him  for  the  moment,  though  he  was  all 
forgiveness  in  five  minutes.  I  had  been  with  him  one 
night  to  West  Ham  to  hear  Gipsy  Smith  tell  the  story  of 
his  life.  Law  had  a  front  seat  on  the  platform,  and  when 
Gipsy  described  the  episode  of  his  mother’s  death.  Law, 
who  was  very  susceptible  to  pathos,  drew  a  handkerchief 
from  his  pocket  and  wiped  his  eyes,  though  he  had  heard 
Gipsy  tell  the  story  time  and  time  again.  At  the  end  of 
the  same  week  we  were  together  in  the  Midlands  at  a 
Free  Church  meeting  when  Sir  Joseph  Compton  Rickett 
(then  treasurer  of  the  Free  Church  Council)  made  a  speech, 
and  with  the  somewhat  heavy-footed  humour  that  he, 
affected  asked  if  it  was  not  better  to  be  damned  than  to  be 
dammed  up.  Law,  sitting  in  the  front  row  of  the  plat¬ 
form,  laughed  uproariously  and  helped  the  meeting  to  see 
that  it  was  :a  joke.  After  the  meeting  a  little  group  of  us 
had  supper  together.  Conversation  turned  on  Sir  Joseph 
Compton  Rickett’s  mot  and  Law’s  heroic  service  in  mak¬ 
ing  the  joke  apparent.  I  described  with  rather  cruel 
exaggeration  how  Law  earlier  in  the  week  had  led  the 
weeping  at  Gipsy  Smith’s  lecture,  and  then  turning  to 
Law,  I  added,  “It’s  all  right  as  long  as  you  never  mix 
these  things  up.  Law;  but  if  ever  you  do  the  right  thing — 
laugh  at  Gipsy  Smith’s  pathos  and  cry  over  Compton 
Rickett’s  humour,  you’ll  lose  your  job  as  secretary  of  the 
National  Free  Church  Council.”  Poor  Thomas  Law’s 
reign  did  not  end  quite  that  way,  though  both  men  had  a 
hand  in  forcing  his  abdication. 


CHAPTER  XXXVII 


THE  DECAY  OF  DISSENT 

The  younger  generations  of  Free  Churchmen  have,  I 
am  afraid,  forgotten — if,  indeed,  they  have  ever  heard — 
the  very  name  of  Mr.  J.  Carvell  Williams;  but  they  owe 
some  of  their  liberties  to  this  plain,  rather  odd  man,  who  was 
secretary  of  the  Liberation  Society  for  many  years  and  an 
M.P.  in  two  Parliaments.  Mr.  Carvell  Williams  had  an 
encyclopaedic  knowledge  of  ecclesiastical  law  and  history, 
and  as  he  sat  in  his  dusty  office  in  Sergeants’  Inn  sur¬ 
rounded  by  legal  tomes,  I  always  thought  that  there  was 
something  harmoniously  fusty  in  his  own  appearance.  He 
was  very  deaf,  and  had  a  harsh  voice,  and  a  harsher  cough. 
To  anyone  not  knowing  him  he  must  have  presented  a 
rather  forbidding  appearance,  but,  in  reality,  he  was  a  very 
genial  and  gentle  soul,  condemned  by  his  principles  to 
wage  ceaseless  war  against  bishops  and  ecclesiastics  in  the 
interests  of  religious  liberty.  He  was  a  poor  man,  and 
when  a  national  Nonconformist  testimonial  was  raised  for 
him  he  drew  the  money — on  account — as  it  came  in. 
When  the  public  presentation  was  actually  made  a  cheque 
for  the  total  amount  raised  was  given  to  him,  but  the  next 
day  he  exchanged  that  cheque  for  the  balance  that  had 
been  left  unpaid  to  him.  There  used  to  be  a  story  afloat  in 
Fleet  Street  of  a  sporting  man  for  whom  his  racing  friends 
got  up  a  testimonial.  Someone  was  commissioned  to  ask 
him  in  what  form  it  would  be  most  acceptable.  “Oh,  give 
me  something,”  he  said,  “that  will  pawn  for  three  or  four 
hundred.”  It  is  part  of  the  etiquette  of  receiving  a  testi¬ 
monial  to  feign  astonishment;  but  I  fancy  the  occasions  are 

225 


226 


The  Best  I  Remember 


very  few  when  the  surprise  is  really  genuine.  I  knew  of  a 
minister  who  canvassed  for  his  own  farewell  testimonial 
when  he  was  leaving  a  provincial  town,  and  having  decided 
himself  that  it  should  take  the  shape  of  a  gold  watch  he 
composed  the  inscription  to  be  engraved  on  the  case. 
Testimonials  are  apt  to  be  overdone  nowadays,  and  I 
believe  the  Brotherhood  moveiiient  has  set  its  face  against 
the  practice. 

The  late  Mr.  John  Lobb  was  a  power  in  London  when 
I  first  knew  Fleet  Street.  He  was  a  Common  Councillor 
of  the  City  of  London,  a  member  of  the  School  Board, 
editor  and  proprietor  of  the  Christian  Age  (now  defunct, 
but  then  a  prosperous  religious  weekly),  and  a  man  who 
carried  weight  in  the  world  of  philanthropy,  education, 
civic  politics  and  organized  Christianity.  He  was  a  mem¬ 
ber  of  the  Press  Club  for  many  years,  and  cultivated  a  “hail 
fellow  well  met  **  manner  with  all  his  fellow-members. 
At  that  time  he  was  a  wealthy  man,  living  in  expensive 
style,  and  rather  disposed  to  talk  about  it.  Later,  some¬ 
how,  he  lost  his  money  and  got  mixed  up  in  company  pro¬ 
moting  with  rather  dubious  coadjutors.  I  lost  sight  of 
him  for  some  years,  and  then  met  him  one  Sunday  dressed 
in  funereal  black  with  a  silk  hat  and  black  gloves — looking 
for  all  the  world  like  one  of  Charles  Dickens’s  spiteful 
caricatures  of  a  dissenting  minister.  He  told  me  he  was  liv¬ 
ing  in  a  maisonnette  on  the  edge  of  Tooting  Bee  Common. 
“We’ve  only  four  rooms,’’  he  said,  “but  I’ve  never  been  so 
happy — nor  has  my  wife.  We’ve  found  out  that  there  is 
nothing  in  great  possessions.”  He  had  been  bitten  with 
spiritualism,  and  would  talk  of  what  he  called  the 
“materializations”  he  had  seen  at  stances.  He  showed 
me  a  photograph  of 'himself  with  the  “ghost  ”  of  Dan  Leno 
looking  over  his  shoulder.  Later  I  used  to  meet  him  on 
Sunday  mornings,  always  in  sepulchral  black,  making  his 
way  to  a  “Kosmon  Temple  ” — a  little  tin  tabernacle  in  a 


227 


The  Decay  of  Dissent 

weedy  garden  off  the  Balham  High  Road.  He  always 
looked  very  contented,  and  never  sighed  for  the  old  days 
“when  he  ran  his  own  six  horses.”  I  remember  John  Lobb 
telling  me  of  a  visit  he  paid  to  Dan  Leno  when  that  famous 
low  comedian  was  eking  out  his  life  in  Colney  Hatch 
Asylum.  Lobb  asked  poor  Leno  if  the  clock  in  the 
visitors’  room  was  right.  Leno  said  it  was,  and  then 
sidling  up  to  Lobb  he  added  in  a  very  confidential 

whisper  :  “And  it’s  the  only  d - ^d  thing  in  this  place  that 

is  right.”  John  Lobb’s  own  end  was  lonely  and  sad.  He 
died  in  Wandsworth  Workhouse  Infirmary.  He  had 
started  life  as  a  Ragged  School  lad  in  East  London. 
Poverty — riches — poverty  was  his  life  course. 

Since  1890  many  age-long  Nonconformist  disabilities 
have  been  removed ;  but  with  each  successive  release  from 
a  grievance  the  Free  Churches  seem  also  to  have  lost  some 
vitality.  The  old  dissidence  loses  zest  as  dissent  ceases  to 
carry  penalties.  It  is  an  historic  truism  that  ideal  causes 
thrive  on  persecution.  Any  sort  of  a  crusade  begins  to  be 
taken  seriously  when  someone  has  thought  it  worth  while 
to  suffer  for  it.  That  is  why  the  Pankhursts  got  women 
the  vote,  while  Mrs.  Fawcett  would  have  gone  on  whistling 
for  the  franchise  for  another  thirty  yeajs.  In  the  nine¬ 
teenth  century  Nonconformity  throve  on  its  negative 
phases.  To-day  the  Free  Churches,  with  fewer  reasons  for 
public  protest  and  political  action  against  disabilities,  have 
to  develop  their  positive  phases.  So  the  Nonconformist 
has  to  become  the  Free  Churchman.  From  fighting  against 
grievances  he  turns  to  glorying  in  his  freedom.  This 
necessary  transition  has  changed,  or  is  rapidly  changing, 
the  entire  ethos  of  the  Free  Churches.  There  is  room  for  a 
good  book  on  the  function  of  revolt. 

Nothing,  I  think,  indexes  so  exactly  the  change  in 
Nonconformist  thought  and  feeling  within  the  last  thirty 


228 


The  Best  I  Remember 


years  as  the  attitude  of  Free  Churchmen  to-day  towards 
the  Cecil  family.  Thirty  years  ago  Lord  Salisbury  was 
a  b^e  noir  to  Nonconformists.  They  felt  that  he  was  con¬ 
temptuous  of  them,  and  in  their  eyes  he  was  the  feudal 
tyrant  who  kept  Methodists  in  Hatfield  worshipping  in  a 
stable  because  he  would  not  allow  them  to  buy  or  lease  a 
site  for  a  Wesleyan  chapel  on  his  estate.  Mr.  Arthur 
Balfour  sustained  the  Cecilian  traditional  attitude  towards 
Nonconformists,  and  provoked  them  to  a  white  heat  of 
anger  by  his  Education  Acts.  They  felt  that  he  held  them 
in  derision,  and  I  imagine  they  were  not  far  wrong.  But 
now  Lord  Robert  Cecil  and  Lord  Hugh  Cecil  have  warm 
admirers  by  the  thousand  in  the  Free  Churches.  Just  as 
Victorian  Nonconformists  found  an  idol  in  Mr.  Gladstone 
because  he  carried  moral  passion  into  politics,  so  modern 
Free  Churchmen  see  in  the  Cecil  brothers  the  embodiment 
of  righteousness  applied  to  public  affairs,  The  new 
generations  of  Free  Churchmen  have  lost  touch  with  the 
older  Nonconformity.  They  are  unconcerned  about  mat¬ 
ters  like  Disestablishment  and  Disendowment  and  minor 
questions  of  ecclesiastical  drapery  and  millinery  :  but  are 
very  deeply  concerned  about  having  the  mind  and  spirit 
of  Christ  applied  to  political,  social  and  economic  condi¬ 
tions.  And  they  recognize  in  the  Cecils  the  will  to  make 
this  ap.plication  seriously  and  at  any  cost. 

A  most  spectacular  demonstration  of  the  speed  with 
which  such  changes  come  occurred  when  Lord  Hugh  Cecil 
accepted  an  invitation  to  address  the  Protestant  Dissenting 
Deputies  in  the  Memorial  Hall  on  the  League  of  Nations. 
As  I  sat  in  the  library  of  that  hall  (erected  as  a  memorial 
to  the  Dissenting  clergymen  who  in  1662  left  their  parishes 
and  went  out  into  the  wilderness  in  protest  against  the  Act 
of  Uniformity),  amidst  the  descendants  of  the  Deputies  of 
the  three  Dissenting  denominations  (Baptist,  Congrega¬ 
tional  and  Presbyterian)  who  from  the  time  of  William  and 
Mary  have  had  right  of  access  to  the  Throne  in  defence  of 


229 


The  Decay  of  Dissent 

Nonconformist  civil  liberties,  hearing-  Lord  Hugh  Cecil 
speak  from  a  platform  behind  which  were  stained-glass 
windows  commemorating  the  martyrdoms  inflicted  on 
Dissenters  by  his  own  ancestors,  the  sense  of  the  topsy¬ 
turvydom  of  it  all  was  all-pervading ;  yet,  at  the  end  of  the 
address,  one  of  the  secretaries  of  the  Deputies  drew  loud 
applause  from  that  gathering  of  Free  Churchmen  when 
with  obvious  sincerity  he  said  :  “We  all  love  Lord  Hugh 
Cecil.”  And  it  came  almost  as  a  shock  to  one’s  historic 
sense  when  Lord  Hugh,  also  speaking  with  evident  sin¬ 
cerity,  thanked  God  that  the  old  and  bitter  animosities 
of  our  forefathers  have  been  pushed  behind  us,  and  have 
given  place  to  a  real  sense  of  brotherhood  and  fellowship 
between  all  who  worship  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  in  sincerity 
and  truth. 

A  little  incident  that  occurred  on  the  day  Lord  Hugh 
Cecil  addressed  the  Dissenting  Deputies  lingers  in  my 
mind.  I  was  walking  up  the  staircase  of  the  Memorial 
Hall  when  a  lady  stopped  me  to  ask  if  I  thought  she  might 
attend  the  meeting,  though  she  was  not  a  Dissenting 
Deputy.  She  was,  she  said,  Lord  Hugh  Cecil’s  private 
secretary,  and  she  had  so  few  opportunities  of  hearing  him 
speak  that  if  she  could  gain  admittance  she  would  think  it 
was  a  privilege.  My  good  friend,  Mr.  A.  J.  Shepheard, 
secretary  of  the  Deputies,  to  whom  I  applied,  welcomed  the 
lady  into  the  library.  That  a  public  man’s  private  secre¬ 
tary  should  go  to  such  trouble  to  hear  him  speak  implies 
such  a  tribute  to  the  man’s  qualities  of  character  that  I 
think  the  episode  is  worth  recording. 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII 


DISILLUSIONMENTS 

Every  man,  I  imagine,  can  fix  the  date  and  occasion  of 
his  first  great  disillusionment.  Mine  came  when  I  was 
a  boy  of  nine,  and  every  detail  is  burnt  upon  my  memory. 
At  my  day  school  in  a  Lancashire  town  the  boys  had  a 
mad  craze  one  year  for  one  particular  form  of  sweets.  All 
our  pocket  money  went  on  a  sort  of  sherbet,  which  we  ate 
dry  with  a  spoon,  and  which  was  called  “Kali.”  It  was 
sold  in  little  flat  wooden  boxes,  and  there  were  several 
varieties — lemon,  orange,  pineapple,  etc.  Opinions  varied 
enormously  as  to  the  merits  of  the  various  kinds.  One  boy 
swore  by  lemon  Kali,  while  another  cared  for  nothing 
but  orange  Kali,  and  a  third  vowed  that  all  other 
varieties  were  simply  uneatable  offal  compared  with  pine¬ 
apple  Kali.  We  quarrelled,  and  almost  came  to  blows, 
over  the  relative  merits  of  these  Kalis.  We  formed 
groups  of  orange  Kali  boys,  and  felt  bitterly  to¬ 
wards  the  avowed  champions  of  lemon  and  pineapple 
Kali.  In  fact,  we  elevated  the  Kalis  into  party 
issues.  The  summer  holidays  came  when  these  differences 
of  opinion  were  at  a  height,  and  I  went  to  visit  relatives 
in  an  East  Lancashire  town.  While  there  I  had  the 
supreme  joy  of  being  taken  over  the  sweet  factory  where 
the  Kalis  were  made.  On  my  round  of  the  factory  I 
entered  a  room  where  four  girls  in  white  overalls  were 
filling  the  flat  wooden  boxes,  already  labelled,  with  the 
toothsome  powder.  There  was  a  mountainous  pile  of  it  on 
a  huge  round  table.  I  looked  at  the  boxes.  They  bore 
coloured  labels — yellow  for  lemon  Kali,  red  for  orange 

230 


Disillusionments 


231 


Kali,  and  green  for  pineapple  Kali,  but  all  the  boxes 
were  being  filled  from  the  same  pile.  Aghast,  I  asked  one 
girl  if  a  horrible  mistake  was  not  being  made.  “Aren’t 
you  putting  orange  Kali  in  a  ,  lemon  Kali  box  ?  ’’  I 
asked  in  a  tone  that  must  have  sounded  horror-struck. 
“Oh,  no,”  she  said,  “there’s  no  difference  in  the  Kali — 
it  is  only  in  the  labels  on  the  boxes.”  I  left  the  factory 
a  sadly  disillusioned  boy. 

In  the  years  that  have  fled  since  that  first  rude  shock 
to  my  boyish  faith  I  have  often  recalled  the  scene  and  my 
own  sinking  feelings,  whenever  any  of  my  swans  have 
turned  out  geese,  or  any  of  my  idols  have  betrayed  their 
feet  of  clay.  “It  is  only  the  labels  that  are  different” 
I  have  often  thought  when  party  politicians  I  trusted  acted 
as  I  imagined  that  only  their  opponents  could  have  done  in 
similar  circumstances.  The  cynical  reflection,  “A  differ¬ 
ence  in  the  labels  only,”  has  occurred  to  me  when  I  have 
found  that  working  for  pagans  and  working  for  professed 
Christians  so  often  involves  no  difference  in  their  treat¬ 
ment  of  their  employees.  It  is  not  mere  cynicism  that 
leads  me  to  revive  my  first  disillusionment  whenever  a 
fresh  disillusionment  comes  upon  me.  In  politics  as  well 
as  in  religion  the  struggle  of  the  immediate  future  must 
be  a  fight  for  reality  or — in  the  after-war  sag  when  we 
have  all  eaten  our  direction  labels — both  Church  and  party 
shibboleths  will  be  ignored  by  the  multitude,  or  despised 
as  a  mere  matter  of  labels  signifying  no  essential 
differences. 

Already  the  working  classes  are  contemptuous  about 
churches  and  suspicious  about  party  politics.  I  once  heard 
a  soul-embittered  working  man  say  a  very  savage  thing. 
He  declared  that  all  through  the  industrial  age  there  had 
been  two  methods  adopted  by  employers  and  capitalists  to 
prevent  the  workers  from  demanding  their  full  rights. 
One  was  to  provide  all  possible  facilities  for  the  workmen 
to  dope  themselves  with  beer;  the  other  was  to  offer  them 

p 


232 


The  Best  I  Remember 


evangelical  religion  to  make  them  forget  their  woes  in 
this  life  by  dwelling  on  the  good  time  coming  to  them  in 
the  next  world.  Both  schemes,  he  said,  had  worked. 
But,  he  said,  quoting  Lincoln,  “You  can’t  fool  all  the 
people  all  the  time,’’  and  the  working  man  now  sees  the 
folly  of  drinking  and  has  done  with  churches. 

The  little  girl  who  prayed  that  the  bad  people  might 
be  made  good  and  the  good  people  made  nice  uncon¬ 
sciously  probed  the  very  heart  of  a  tremendous  problem 
— that  of  making  goodness  attractive.  Dr.  C.  A.  Berry 
had  a  great  sermon  on  mischievous  goodness.  James 
Hinton  used  to  say  that  he  “felt  suffocated  near  the  so- 
called  good  people,  who  so  often  are  meagre  in  sympathy 
or  maggoty  in  intellect.”  There  are  saints  who  make  one 
want  to  swear.  To  make  virtue  attractive  is  one  of  the 
tasks  to  which  the  churches  have  never  honestly  applied 
themselves.  Dr.  Woods  Hutchinson  has  said  that  virtues 
seem  sometimes  as  dangerous  as  vices  if  not  indulged  in 
with  strict  moderation.  Life,  as  J.  H.  Shorthouse  put  it, 
is  one  of  the  finest  of  the  fine  arts;  but  some  Christian 
people  have  a  fatal  habit  of  making  life  joyless.  Mr. 
Bernard  Snell  quite  shocked  some  Free  Church  people  by 
saying  that  there  was  often  more  genuine  fellowship  in  a 
village  public  house  than  in  a  church.  Laurence  Housman 
meant  the  same  thing  when  he  declared  that 

Ale  does  more  than  Milton  can 

To  justify  God’s  ways  to  man. 

The  early  Church  was  a  fellowship,  but  some  modern 
churches  are  refrigerators. 

Why  is  it,  I  wonder,  that  so  few  public  speakers  have 
pleasing  voices?  I  have  been  asking  myself  this  question 
for  thirty  years,  and  the  answer  evades  me.  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes,  I  think,  says  that  Heaven  gives  us  all 


Disill  usionments 


233 


our  other  features,  but  we  make  our  own  mouths.  We 
make  our  own  voices,  too,  in  a  very  large  measure.  Sainte 
Beuve  says  that  one  always  has  the  voice  of  one’s  mind — 
which  may  be  true,  though  it  is  so  hard  on  Sir  Hamar 
Greenwood  that  I  never  like  to  believe  the  dictum.  Very 
few  actors  have  unpleasant  voices,  and  fewer  still  produce 
their  voices  badly.  Yet  in  the  pulpit  and  on  the  platform 
hardly  one  voice  in  ten  is  really  pleasant,  and  not  one  in 

i 

a  hundred  is  produced  well.  The  best  platform  voice  I 
can  remember  (I  never  heard  John  Bright  in  his  prime) 
was  the  Rev.  J.  Hirst  Hollowell’s.  A  musical  journalist 
whom  I  knew,  never  heard  Hirst  Hollowell  without  saying, 
“This  man  ought  to  be  singing  in  grand  opera.”  Dr. 
Hensley  Henson  has  also  a  very  beautiful  voice,  and  I 
have  never  heard  any  speaker  make  English  words  sound 
so  exquisite.  Mr.  Spurgeon’s  voice  was  lovely ;  even  when 
he  shouted  it  was  musical.  Mr.  Silvester  Horne  had  a 
beautiful  voice  in  his  early  Kensington  days,  but  he  tore 
it  to  rags  by  shouting,  and  it  grew  harsh  in  his  later  years. 
Mr.  Lloyd  George’s  voice  is  a  great  factor  in  his  wizardry, 
but  he  too  has  overworked  it,  and  it  is  often  hoarse 
nowadays.  Mr.  Asquith’s  voice  is  hard,  but  clear.  Mr. 
Chamberlain’s  voice  had  a  clarion  note.  Dr.  Parker’s 
voice  was  deep  and  thick,  and,  when  he  raised  it,  it  was 
unpleasant.  To  hear  him  shout  the  word  “murder” — and 
he  always  shouted  it — was  horrible.  Dr.  R.  F.  Horton 
has  a  silken  quality  in  his  voice  tones.  He  could  make  the 
repetition  of  the  alphabet  sound  pathetic.  If  he  had  not 
used  it  so  skilfully.  Dr.  R.  J.  Campbell’s  feeble  voice 
would  never  have  been  heard  in  even  a  moderate  sized 
building.  Dr.  J.  H.  Jowett  has  a  wonderful  range  of  tone 
in  his  voice,  and  no  art  of  voice  production  has  been 
neglected  by  him.  The  oddest  voice  I  can  recall  is  Mr. 
Chesterton’s.  It  is  a  thin  squeak,  and  coming  from  so 
ponderous  a  man  makes  its  thinness  more  conspicuous. 
He  says  himself  that  his  voice  is  the  original  mouse  to 


234 


The  Best  I  Remember 


which  the  mountain  gave  birth.  Dr.  Orchard’s  voice  has 
a  distinctly  Cockney  twang.  Dr.  Campbell  Morgan’s  voice 
is  glorious  in  range  and  timbre,  and  I  always  thought  he 
read  the  Bible  better  than  anyone  I  have  ever  heard.  Dr. 
Alexander  McLaren  had  a  voice  so  exquisitely  modulated 
that  one  forgot  his  Scotch  accent. 

The  methods  of  voice  production  that  suit  the  stage  do 
not  necessarily  suit  the  pulpit.  And  the  most  irritating 
voices  in  the  pulpit  are  those  fashioned  on  the  lines  of 
professional  elocutionists.  Actors  and  elocutionists  neces¬ 
sarily  train  their  voices  for  the  purpose  of  personating 
characters  other  than  themselves.  But  the  preacher’s  voice 
must  be  his  own,  and  the  slightest  suggestion  of  the  theatre 
is  obnoxious.  All  that  the  preacher  can  learn  from  the 
actor  is  the  trick  of  making  himself  heard  from  the  be¬ 
ginning  to  the  end  of  every  sentence.  The  vast  majority 
of  preachers  fail  to  do  even  that. 

After  a  well-known  London  actress  had  given  a  recita¬ 
tion  in  a  northern  town  a  critical  hearer  remarked  to  a 
friend  that  every  now  and  then  he  caught  a  vulgar  tone 
in  her  voice.  “It’s  not  in  her  voice,  my  dear  fellow,”  his 
friend  made  reply,  “it’s  in  her  soul.”  I  have  often  heard 
that  flaw  in  the  soul  come  out  in  a  preacher’s  voice. 

The  custom  of  devoting  a  section  of  every  Sunday 
morning  service  to  children  puts  an  intolerable  strain 
on  many  ministers.  I  imagine  that  preparing  a  new 
children’s  address  each  week  plagues  preachers  far  more 
than  writing  two  new  sermons.  The  gift  of  talking  to 
children  is  unequally  bestowed,  and  to  find  suitable  stories 
to  tell  from  the  pulpit  week  by  week  is  evidently  a  sorry 
burden.  Occasionally  one  story  seems  to  have  a  “run” 
all  over  the  country.  Some  time  ago,  when  the  church 
I  attend  was  without  a  minister  for  about  a  year,  we 
had  a  procession  of  “supply  ”  preachers  through  the 
pulpit.  One  after  another  told,  as  a  children’s  address. 


Disillusionments 


235 


a  story  about  a  little  boy  who  presented  his  mother  with  a 
bill  for  2S.  6d.  setting  out  the  charges  for  running  errands, 
chopping  wood,  cleaning  knives  and  other  odd  chores. 
The  mother  paid  the  2s.  6d.,  but  along  with  the  cash 
presented  her  bill — “for  caring  for  Fred  for  nine  years, 
feeding  him,  clothing  him,  nursing  him,  taking  him  on 
holidays,  etc.,  ;^o  os.  od.”  It  was  quite  a  nice  little  moral 
story,  and  on  first  hearing  was  very  effective.  But  as  one 
“supply”  preacher  after  another  told  the  story  its  lustre 
dimmed,  and  at  last  we  found  it  interesting  to  watch 
for  variations  in  the  items  in  the  boy’s  bill.  Eventually, 
when  a  good  friend  of  my  own.  Rev.  J.  — ,  supplied 

the  pulpit,  and  began  his  children’s  address  with  the 
threadbare  tale,  there  were  smiles  all  over  th^  church. 
Next  day  I  met  J.  G.  in  a  restaurant,  and  congratulated 
him  on  his  children’s  address.  He  seemed  pleased.  Then 
I  added,  “Well,  I’ll  put  it  this  way — of  all  the  ten  men 
who  have  told  that  story  from  our  pulpit  in  the  last  twelve 
months,  you  told  it  the  best.” 

J.  G.’s  unfailing  sense  of  humour  was  equal  to  the 
occasion,  and  he  told  me  of  an  experience  he  had  in 
Yorkshire.  He  had  been  at  a  ministers’  “retreat,”  and 
someone  told  a  story  of  a  little  girl  who  prayed  that  her 
brother  should  not  catch  any  sparrows  in  a  brick  trap  he 
had  set  up  in  the  garden,  and  then  having  prayed,  she 
went  out  into  the  garden  and  kicked  the  trap  to  smithereens 
to  make  doubly  sure.  A  few  days  afterwards  J.  G.  was 
presiding  at  a  meeting  in  a  Yorkshire  town  and  garnished 
his  speech  from  the  chair  with  that  story.  It  went  very 
well,  and  vastly  amused  the  meeting.  Another  minister 
(who  had  not  arrived  in  time  to  hear  the  chairman)  told 
the  same  story  half-way  through  the  meeting.  This  time 
it  tickled  the  audience  immensely.  The  final  speaker  of 
the  evening  was  a  minister  who  arrived  at  the  last  moment 
(he  had  come  on  from  another  meeting).  He  announced 
that  he  had  no  time  for  a  speech,  but  he  did  want  to  tell 


236  The  Best  I  Remember 

a  story  which  contained  all  he  needed  to  say.  And  he, 
too,  started  to  tell  that  story  of  the  prayerful  little  girl  and 
her  brother’s  brick  trap.  This  time  the  audience  was 
simply  screaming.  Every  sentence  in  the  story  drew  up¬ 
roarious  cheers.  The  minister  who  was  speaking  was 
puzzled.  His  expression  seemed  to  say,  “Well,  I  thought 
this  was  a  good  story,  but  I  did  not  think  it  would  cause 
all  this  wild  hilarity.”  He  learned  the  truth  when  he  sat 
down.  A  blunt  Yorkshire  layman,  sitting  on  the  next 
chair,  whispered,  “Tha’s  the  third  chap  as  ’as  towd  that 
tale  to-night.” 


CHAPTER  XXXIX 


London's  spell 

10ND0N  has  improved  vastly  as  a  city  during  my  ac- 
J  quaintance  with  it.  Holywell  Street  and  the  slum 
region  behind  it  have  been  swept  away  to  be  replaced  by 
Kingsway  and  Aldwych,  while  the  mean  streets  and  shabby 
shops  around  Parliament  Square  have  gone  for  good,  and 
the  unsavoury  area  around  Seven  Dials  has  become  quite 
respectable.  I  spent  many  a  happy  hour  hunting  in  the 
twopenny  boxes  outside  the  second-hand  bookshops  in 
Holywell  Street.  I  never  lighted  upon  a  real  bargain, 
beyond  an  old  calf-bound  edition  of  Gifford’s  “Juvenal  ” 
and  a  choice  little  copy  of  Sterne’s  “Sentimental  Journey  ” ; 
but  I  made  the  beginnings  of  a  small  library  out  of  the  two¬ 
penny  boxes.  I  miss  the  Holywell  Street  bookshops,  but 
the  beauty  of  the  Gaiety  Theatre,  built  on  the  old  site,  is 
compensation  for  the  disappearance.  “The  Gaiety  ”  is  one 
of  the  modern  London  buildings  I  admire  most.  I  believe 
London  owes  the  splendour  of  that  building  to  Mr.  John 
Burns. 

When  the  London  County  Council  demolished  the 
old  Gaiety  it  paid  compensation  to  the  directors  in  a 
lump  sum.  The  directors  had  plans  prepared  for  a  new 
Gaiety,  quite  unpretentious  in  design.  The  L.C.C.  com¬ 
missioned  Mr.  Norman  Shaw  to  prepare  an  alternative 
design — the  present  design,  in  fact — but  the  Gaiety  direc¬ 
tors  objected  to  the  enhanced  cost  which  adoption  of  this 
design  would  involve.  I  believe  it  was  a  matter  of 
;;^8o,ooo.  The  County  Council  sought  the  sanction  of 
Mr.  John  Burns,  who  was  then  President  of  the  Local 

237 


238 


The  Best  I  Remember 


Government  Board,  to  incur  this  additional  expenditure 
out  of  public  funds.  Mr.  Burns  could  not  sanction  the 
expenditure,  but,  putting  a  blind  eye  to  the  telescope,  he 
hinted  that  the  County  Council  would  not  have  to  submit 
its  account  to  L.G.B.  audit.  Taking  the  risk,  the  County 
Council  paid  the  extra  cost  of  the  superior  architectural 
design.  The  style  of  the  Gaiety  Theatre  set  an  exalted 
standard  for  all  the  buildings  on  Kingsway  and  Aldwych, 
and  immeasurably  increased  the  assessment  value  of  the 
whole  area.  So  the  extra  expenditure  on  the  Gaiety 
Theatre  has  been  recouped  over  and  over  again  to  the 
London  ratepayers. 

The  first  time  I  saw  Mr.  John  Burns  he  was  being 
dragged  by  his  trouser-leg  off  the  plinth  of  one  of  the 
Landseer  lions  at  a  Trafalgar  Square  labour  demonstration. 
He  was  a  fiery  radical  agitator  then ;  since  then  he  has 
been  a  Cabinet  Minister  with  ;^5,ooo  a  year,  and  now  he 
is  a  cautious  Liberal — quite  on  the  right  wing  of  Liberalism 
— and  a  Privy  Councillor,  and — ^well,  “life  is  a  comedy  for 
those  who  think.”  Has  he  changed,  or  has  Liberal  opinion 
run  in  front  of  him  ?  I  always  lose  patience  when  I  hear 
people  complain  that  John  Burns  is  egotistical.  My  in¬ 
variable  retort  is  that  he  has  some  right  to  be.  Besides, 
his  egotism  is  so  engagingly  ingenuous.  I  love  to  hear 
John  Burns  talk  about  London  (who  will  ever  improve  on 
his  remark  to  a  Canadian  who  was  comparing  the  Thames 
at  Westminster  invidiously  with  the  Ottawa  River  :  “Oh, 
but  the  Thames  is  not  a  river,”  said  Burns,  “it’s  liquid 
history  ”),  and  I  like  to  hear  him  talk  about  himself.  I 
remember  him  overtaking  a  friend  and  myself  as  we  left 
the  National  Liberal  Club  one  day  soon  after  Mr.  Burns 
had  attained  Cabinet  rank.  “If  you’re  going  to  Fleet 
Street,”  he  said,  “I’ll  come  with  you.  I’m  going  to 
Chancery  Lane.”  Then  he  added  :  “I’m  going  to  pay  the 
penalty  of  greatness.”  “Oh,”  I  rejoined,  “in  what  way  ?  ” 
“I’m  going  to  Edes  to  pay  for  the  robe  in  which  I  am  to 


239 


London’s  Spell 

take  my  LL.D.  at  Liverpool  University  next  week.”  ‘‘I 
saw  they  were  conferring  a  degree  on  you,”  I  answered. 
“Is  it  for  your  Local  Government  administration,  or  for 
your  Lees  Raper  Lecture?  ”  “I  think  it  is  for  my  Local 
Government  work;  but  ” — turning  swiftly  upon  me — “what 
do  you  know  about  my  Lees  Raper  Lecture?  ”  “Well,” 
I  answered,  “I’ve  read  it,  and  I  think  it  is  a  very  weighty 
contribution  to  the  literature  of  the  liquor  question.”  Mr. 
Burns  thanked  me  and  we  walked  on,  chatting  about  things 
in  general,  till  my  friend  parted  from  us  at  Middle  Temple 
Lane,  where  we  turned  towards  Fleet  Street.  Then  Mr. 
Burns  said  :  “It  was  very  kind  of  you  to  say  what  you  did 
about  my  Lees  Raper  Lecture.”  “I  certainly  meant  it  and 
did  not  say  it  as  a  mere  compliment.  I’ve  read  the  lecture 
twice,  and  it  was  a  good  piece  of  work.  I  did  not  hear 

it  delivered,  but - ”  “Oh,”  he  burst  in,  “but  you  should 

have  heard  it  delivered ;  it  was  magnificently  delivered.  I 
threw  all  my  weight  into  its  delivery.”  Egotistical !  of 
course  it  was  egotistical,  but  the  daylight  frankness  of  it 
silences  criticism. 

Mr.  John  Burns  was  one  of  the  five  Cabinet  Ministers 
who  stood  out  against  the  war  at  the  end  of  July,  1914. 
Lord  Morley,  Mr.  Harcourt,  Sir  John  Simon  and  Mr. 
Lloyd  George  were  the  others  who  tendered  their  resigna¬ 
tions.  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  Mr.  Hugh  Edwards  says  in  his 
biography  (the  proofs  of  which  Mr.  Lloyd  George  passed), 
had  put  his  resignation  on  paper  to  hand  to  Mr.  Asquith. 
At  the  eleventh  hour  he  was  converted  to  the  war  by 
sitting  at  a  dinner  party  next  to  the  Belgian  Ambassador, 
who  told  him  how  implicitly  Belgium  was  relying  on 
England  to  sustain  her  treaty  obligations  to  preserve  Bel¬ 
gian  integrity.  Mr.  Lloyd  George  tore  up  his  resignation 
that  night.  Next  morning  Mr.  John  Burns  and  Lord 
Morley  were  not  asked  to  withdraw  their  resignations  ;  but 
the  other  dissenting  Cabinet  Ministers  were  urged  to  retain 
office,  and  did  so.  On  the  day  war  was  declared  John 


240 


The  Best  I  Remember 


Burns  wrote  in  his  diary,  “War  declared — ultimate  results  : 
Conscription,  Protection  and  Militarism  in  England.” 

When  the  Balkan  war  was  raging  I  was  sitting  reading 
the  W estminster  Gazette  in  the  cosy  basement  of  Evans’s 
tea  shop  at  the  Piccadilly  corner  of  Bond  Street  one  after¬ 
noon,  when  a  tall,  grey-bearded  gentleman,  with  very 
grave  eyes,  asked  if  he  might  glance  at  the  “stop-press  ” 
war-news  in  my  paper.  I  passed  the  W estminster  across, 
and  my  vis-d-vis  looked  at  it  earnestly  and  handed  it  back 
with  the  remark:  “This  war  is  peculiarly  interesting  to 
me;  I  know  every  inch  of  the  ground  they  are  fighting 
over.”  We  discussed  the  war  and  the  political  situation  it 
was  creating ;  and  then  the  old  gentleman  told  me  that  he 
was  a  martyr  to  neuralgia  which  never  left  him  and  scarcely 
ever  allowed  him  to  sleep.  “  I  endure  it  for  weeks,”  he 
said,  “then  I  feel  I  must  have  an  outburst  or  I  shall  go 
mad.  So  I  sit  down  and  write  a  stinging  letter  about 
something  to  the  Times,  I  dare  say  you  have  seen  my 
letters;  I  am  Sir  Henry  Haworth.” 

Rev.  Andrew  Mearns,  who  was  the  secretary  of  the 
London  Congregational  Union  for  many  years,  was  the 
minister  of  a  church  at  Chelsea  when  he  settled  first  in 
London.  Thomas  Carlyle  was  living  at  Chelsea  in  those 
days.  Mr.  Mearns  told  me  that  he  used  sometimes  to  see 
Carlyle  open  the  door  of  his  house  in  Cheyne  Walk  late 
at  night  and  put  something  on  the  doorstep.  Mr.  Mearns 
went  back  one  night  to  see  what  it  was,  and  found  it  was 
a  clay  pipe.  Carlyle  made  it  a  habit  when  he  finished 
his  last  pipe  at  night  to  fill  it  with  tobacco  and  put  it  on 
the  doorstep  for  the  night  watchman  to  pick  up  and  smoke 
on  his  rounds.  Mr.  Mearns  leapt  into  fame  by  his  book¬ 
let,  “The  Bitter  Cry  of  Outcast  London.”  It  created  a 
tremendous  sensation  and  made  slumming  fashionable  in 
the  early  ’eighties.  Another  Congregational  minister 


241 


London’s  Spell 

claimed  the  actual  authorship  of  the  famous  brochure;  but 
the  real  fact  was  that  Mr.  Mearns  provided  the  title,  the 
ideas  and  the  facts.  The  other  minister  was  the  “literary 
ghost.” 

Dr.  Scott  Lidgett,  who  leads  the  Progressive  party  on 
the  London  County  Council,  edits  the  Contemporary 
Review,  runs  a  social  settlement  in  Bermondsey,  and  is 
the  friend  of  all  good  causes,  shares  with  me  a  passionate 
love  of  the  Surrey  hills.  For  some  years  he  spent  his 
summer  holiday  at  a  remote  farm  at  Abinger  Bottom,  a 
mile  or  so  above  Friday  Street,  where  it  has  been  my  good 
fortune  to  have  a  cottage  for  some  years.  We  often  meet 
in  the  pine  woods  on  Leith  Hill  or  among  the  glorious 
beeches  at  Wotton.  During  the  last  summer  of  the  war 
there  was  a  scarcity  of  beer  in  the  Surrey  hills  and  the 
harvesters  were  in  despair.  A  small  boy  of  mine  and  I 
were  constantly  pulled  up  in  the  evenings  by  weary-looking 
old  men  in  quest  of  ale.  “  Could  you  tell  me,”  they  would 
ask,  “if  they’ve  got  any  beer  at  the  Stephan  Langton  in 
Friday  Street?  ”  One  evening  as  we  were  walking  down 
a  woodland  path  we  saw  an  elderly  man  in  a  well-worn 
straw  hat  trudging  down  the  hill  towards  us.  “Here’s 
another  of  those  old  men  who  want  to  know  if  they’ve 
any  beer  at  the  Stephan  Langton,”  said  my  small  boy. 
“Hush  !  ”  I  said.  “That’s  an  ex-president  of  the  National 
Free  Church  Council.” 


CHAPTER  XL 


TUMULT  AND  PEACE 

SOME  memories  never  fade,  and  I  cannot  imagine  that 
I  shall  ever  forget  that  wild  Saturday  night  at  the 
National  Liberal  Club  in  January,  1906,  when  the  news  of 
the  Liberal  triumphs  at  the  polls  was  declared  in  the  crowded 
smoke-room,  and  when  Liberals,  after  twenty  years  without 
power  and  eleven  years  out  of  office,  saw  Tory  strongholds 
topple  and  fall  like  European  thrones  fell  in  1918.  Mr. 
H.  G.  Wells  was  in  the  same  group  as  myself  on  that  great 
night  in  the  N.L.C.  when  the  Manchester  victories  were 
announced  by  the  old  secretary,  Mr.  Donald  Murray,  who 
for  once  failed  utterly  to  sustain  his  dour  Scottish  restraint. 
But  Mr.  Wells,  who  describes  the  occasion  in  “The  New 
Machiavelli,”  carried  away  from  that  memorable  scene  a 
whole  sheaf  of  data  that  escaped  my  observation.  I  remem¬ 
bered  little  beyond  that  giddy  climacteric  moment  when  the 
cry  “Balfour  is  out  ’’  came  creeping  down  the  smoke-room, 
and  when  two  thousand  men  went  mad  in  one  delirium  of 
concerted  joy.  For  ten  minutes  the  excitement  was  riotous, 
and  Donald  Murray,  figures  in  hand,  found  that  his 
shrillest  whistle  was  unheard  over  the  pandemonium. 
When  silence  was  restored  I  found  myself  standing  on  a 
copper-topped  coffee  table,  voiceless  from  unconscious 
shouting.  But  Mr.  Wells  had  evidently  kept  cool  and 
observant.  He  must  have  been  in  it  all  but  not  of  it. 

One  of  my  memories  of  that  evening  at  the  N.L.C. 
was  of  meeting  Sir  Percy  Bunting,  editor  of  the  Con¬ 
temporary  Review,  on  the  staircase.  Sir  Percy  was  not 
exactly  phlegmatic,  but,  as  a  rule,  he  was  the  most 

242 


Tumult  and  Peace 


243 


restrained  and  precise  of  men.  I  always  wondered  if  he 
had  ever  been  guilty  of  an  emotion.  But  I  saw  another  Sir 
Percy  Bunting  that  night.  Even  he  had  shed  his  im¬ 
penetrable  calm.  His  lips  were  quivering  and  he  trembled 
with  excitement.  He  had  a  glass  of  someth ing-^it  was  not 
milk — in  his  hand,  and  as  he  talked  he  was  sprinkling  the 
contents  of  the  glass  over  the  boots  of  the  men  who  stood 
near  him.  “A  wonderful  night ;  a  most  memorable  night,” 
he  stammered  in  his  excitement.  We  agreed,  raised  three 
more  cheers  for  Winston  Churchill,  and  hurried  off  to 
fight  for  our  hats  and  coats^  at  the  cloak-room. 

Then  come  drear  memories  of  a  December  night,  very 
different,  in  the  same  club — though  not  in  the  same  club 
house — twelve  years  later  when  the  Liberal  debacle  of  1918 
wiped  out  recollections  of  the  Liberal  triumphs  of  1906. 
The  scene  was  changed,  indeed.  Even  the  setting  was 
different.  Instead  of  the  gorgeous  great  smoke-room  of 
the  Whitehall  Place  club-house  members  of  the  N.L.C.  met 
in  the  dingy  ground-floor  room  of  the  Westminster  Palace 
Hotel.  Old  Donald  Murray  had  gone  to  his  last  long  rest. 
Moreover,  the  club  was  a  house  divided  against  itself,  for 
among  the  groups  awaiting  the  news  from  the  ballots  were 
clusters  of  Liberal  Coalitionists  who  raised  cheers  when 
Mr.  Asquith’s  defeat  in  East  Fife  was  declared  and 
applauded  when  old-time  Liberal  citadels  fell  into  Tory 
hands.  The  gloom  that  fell  on  the  club  that  night  was  im¬ 
penetrably  thick.  Old  Liberals  who  had  tasted  defeat  as 
well  as  victory  in  the  past  crept  out  of  the  club  into  the 
darkness  of  Victoria  Street  with  bowed  heads  and  sad 
hearts.  Lloyd  George’s  name  was  hissed,  though  from  his 
portrait  in  the  place  of  honour  over  the  fireplace  his  face 
beamed  smilingly  upon  the  assembly  of  which  he  had  been 
the  idol  but  a  few  years  before.  In  the  hall  John  Burns 
stood  talking  to  a  group  of  abject  souls.  “It  is  what  you 
might  have  expected,”  I  overheard  him  say.  “War  and 
Liberalism  never  can  run  in  double  harness.” 


244 


The  Best  I  Remember 


Journalism  is  a  life  of  fret  and  fume — even  in  its 
backwaters.  The  glamour  of  the  street  of  adventure  wears 
off  with  the  years,  and  a  craving  for  some  refuge  far  from 
the  madding  crowd  is  a  feeling  shared  by  most  journalists. 
My  favourite  retreat  from  the  hustle  of  Fleet  Street  is  a 
quiet  valley  in  the  Surrey  hills  where,  in  a  clearing 
between  the  woodlands  a  little  lake  nestles  between  “oaks 
that  muse  and  pines  that  dream.”  From  our  cottage  win¬ 
dows  we  look  down  on  the  water  whose  surface,  respon¬ 
sive  as  a  human  face,  answers  to  the  gentlest  zephyrs  of  the 
air,  reflects,  as  in  a  mirror,  the  blue  of  the  skies  and  the 
lowering  of  the  clouds,  and  holds  the  lengthening  shadows 
of  the  pines  as  the  evening  falls.  Friday  Street,  in  the 
days  before  the  Daily  Mail  boomed  its  beauties  and 
brought  the  Sunday  motorist  and  even  the  ubiquitous 
char-a-banc  to  disturb  its  placid  life,  was  a  benison  to  my 
soul  as  a  city  worker.  There  the  crowning  sorrow  of  my 
life  came  upon  me,  and  only  there,  I  think  sometimes, 
could  I  have  borne  it.  I  knew  there  what  the  Psalmist 
means  when  he  cries  :  “  I  will  lift  mine  eyes  to  the  hills.” 
There,  too,  I  have  learned  something  of  the  simple  annals 
of  the  poor. 

Long  sojournings  in  the  Surrey  hills  have  given  me  a 
profound  admiration  for  the  British  agricultural  labourer. 
I  am  almost  disposed  to  think  that  he  is  our  most  highly 
skilled  craftsman.  His  brain  moves  slowly,  I  allow;  he  is 
inarticulate  and  consequently  shy  with  townsmen,  and 
his  vocabulary  is  so  limited  that  he  is  often  incomprehen¬ 
sible.  But  the  things  he  knows  and  can  do  compel  my 
admiration.  I  have  in  mind  a  man,  living  in  a  cottage 
near  mine,  who  has  rarely  been  twenty  miles  away  from  his 
birthplace.  But  what  he  does  not  know  about  agricultural 
processes,  farm  animals,  woodlore,  fruit  culture,  flowers,  as 
well  as  about  carpentry,  building,  and  drainage  is  scarcely 
worth  knowing.  His  knowledge  is  encyclopaedic.  Yet  he 
rarely  ventures  an  opinion  except  in  a  diffident  way.  A 


Tumult  and  Peace 


245 


Cockney  with  half  his  knowledge  would  advance  a  decisive 
view  unhesitatingly  on  any  topic  under  the  sun.  Poverty 
— i.e.,  the  clean  poverty  of  the  country,  not  the  sordid 
poverty  of  the  slum — is  not  perhaps  a  bad  thing  when  you 
are  not  afraid  of  it.  The  real  simple  life — by  which  I  mean 
living  in  a  cottage,  austerely  furnished,  content  to  do  one’s 
own  house  and  garden  work,  content  even  to  do  the  un¬ 
pleasant  sanitary  tasks  that  arise  in  genuine  country  cottage 
life — has  its  abiding  attractions.  I  can  live  this  life  for  weeks 
together  without  pining  for  the  scurry  of  Fleet  Street  or  the 
fleshpots  of  a  West  London  club.  To  eat  food  of  one’s 
own  growing,  to  dispense  with  all  hired  labour,  to  trouble 
the  butcher  rarely,  and.  to  find  mental  refreshment  in  the 
quiet  ritual  of  country  life  and  the  wholesome  joys  of  the 
countryside,  this  is  my  own  idea  of  a  heaven  on  earth — 
always  provided  that  a  stream  of  books  is  flowing 
through  the  house.  I  find  I  can  even  be  quite  happy  with¬ 
out  a  daily  newspaper.  Enjoyment  of  country  life  must 
depend  on  one’s  inner  mental  and  spiritual  resources. 
And  the  man  who  can  only  appreciate  the  country  in 
summer  is  not  really  a  country  lover  at  all. 

Just  as  the  war  was  ending  I  saw,  with  a  real  pang,  in 
the  newspapers  an  intimation  of  the  death  of  Mr.  William 
Fancett  of  Maidstone,  at  the  age  of  103.  I  had  not  seen 
him  for  some  years,  but  in  the  ’nineties  I  often  spent  an 
hour  with  the  wonderful  old  man,  and  every  Christmas  we 
exchanged  greetings.  I  believe  he  lived  all  his  years  in 
Maidstone.  Born  just  before  the  Battle  of  Waterloo  was 
fought,  he  lived  in  five  reigns,  and  his  memory  was  so 
retentive  and  his  intelligence  so  fine  that  a  talk  with  him 
was  like  dipping  into  an  anecdotal  history  of  the  nine¬ 
teenth  century.  He  was  one  of  Benjamin  Disraeli’s 
workers  when  Dizzy  stood  for  Maidstone.  They  stood 
side  by  side  on  the  hustings  on  nomination  day.  Dizzy, 
very  foppishly  dressed,  leaned  on  a  gold-headed  cane. 


The  Best  I  Remember 


246 

imperturbable,  amid  excitement  that  came  near  being 
riotous.  “He  was  a  cool  customer,”  William  Fancett  used 
to  say.  Fancett  had  some  queer  tales  to  tell  of  vote¬ 
buying  and  personation  at  Maidstone  elections — for  the 
Kentish  capital  was  a  nest  of  political  corruption  in  those 
days.  Up  to  about  ninety  William  Fancett  was  a  lay 
preacher  in  the  Anglican  Church.  His  vitality  was  almost 
incredible.  A  few  years  before  his  death  he  had  cataract 
on  both  eyes.  Quite  calmly  he  went  into  Maidstone  hos¬ 
pital  for  an  operation,  and  a  month  later  he  was  walking 
about  the  streets  of  the  old  town,  quite  his  old  cheerful  self. 
He  wrote  to  me  just  before  he  underwent  the  operation — 
wrote  in  white  chalk  on  a  huge  sheet  of  brown  paper — and 
he  was  as  cheery  as  a  sandboy.  Old  age  never  afflicted 
him  in  any  way.  He  carried  a  walking  stick  when  he  was 
about  ninety,  but  only  to  swing  it.  I  never  remember 
seeing  him  use  glasses.  He  ate  anything,  without  a 
thought  of  digestive  qualms,  and  enjoyed  his  pipe  to  the 
very  end.  Of  all  the  grand  old  men  I  have  known, 
William  Fancett  had  best  learned  the  art  of  growing  old 
gracefully.  And  it  is  one  of  the  finest  of  the  fine  arts. 


INDEX 


Abel,  Rev.  Charles  W.,  145,  147 
Abraham,  Mr.  William,  24,  26 
Adder,  Max,  196  v- 

Ainger,  Canon,  157 
America,  102,  15 1 
Anglican  Church,  123,  139,  170,  175 
Armstrong,  Rev.  W.  H.,  174 
Ashmead-Bartlett,  Sir  Ellis,  19 
Asquith,  Mr.  H.  H.,  98,  169,  233 
Assisi,  135,  183 
Athenaeum  Club,  The,  116 
Atkins,  Mr.  F.  A.,  34,  74,  85 
Atlantic  Monthly,  The,  153 


B 

Bach,  131 

Balfour,  Earl,  91 

Balfour  of  Burleigh,  Lord,  ii 

Barnes,  Mr.  George  N.,  26 

Barrie,  Sir  James,  8,  38,  61,  202 

Beaverbrook,  Lord,  98 

Bebel,  Herr,  26 

Beecher,  Henry  Ward,  76,  103,  116 
Belfast,  166 

Bennett,  Mr.  Arnold,  8 
Benson,  Mr.  A.  C.,  146 
Berry,  Dr.  Charles  A.,  43,  76,  77, 
232 

Berry,  Rev.  Sidney  M.,  61,  77 
Birmingham,  100,  102,  207 
Birrell,  Mr.  Augustine,  53 
Bishopsgate  Chapel,  182 
“  Bitter  Cry  of  Outcast  London,” 
The,  240 

Black,  Dr.  Hugh,  123 
Boer  War,  The,  59,  92 
Bogus  Degrees,  184,  185 
Bondfield,  Miss  Margaret,  218 

Q 


Booth,  General,  193 
Booth,  Mrs.  Bramwell,  219 
Boston,  Mass.,  15 1,  206,  213 
Bowden,  Mr.  James,  31 
Boyle,  Sir  Courtenay,  ii 
Brace,  Mr.  William,  21 
Bradlaugh,  Charles,  165 
Broadhurst,  Mr.  Henry,  24 
Broadway,  New  York,  82 
Brooklyn  Bridge,  82 
Brotherhood  Movement,  56,  201 
Brown,  Dr.  Charles,  171,  189 
Browning,  Robert,  169 
Bright,  John,  221 
Bristol,  14 

British  Association,  The,  14 
Bryant,  William  Cullen,  221 
Bunting,  Sir  Percy,  242 
Burdette,  Rev.  Robert,  155,  156 
Burns,  Mr.  John,  237-2^59 
Burt,  Mr.  T.,  24 


G 

Cairns,  Dr.  D.  S.,  207 
Calvinism,  C.  H.  Spurgeon’s,  2 
Cambridge,  131 

Campbell,  Dr.  R.  J.,  87,  1 19-127, 
210,  233 

Campbell-Bannerman,  Sir  H.,  21, 
22,  96,  169 

Carden,  Alderman,  81 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  240 
Carr,  Sir  Emsley,  214 
Carson,  Sir  Edward  (Lord),  98 
Cecil,  Lord  Hugh,  228-229 
Cecil,  Lord  Robert,  228 
Central  Hill  Baptist  Chapel,  Upper 
Norwood,  4 


247 


I 


Index 


248 

Central  News,  The,  7 
Chalmers,  James,  149,  150 
Chamberlain,  Mr.  Joseph,  18,  120, 
i6g 

Chapel  of  the  Ascension,  The,  177, 
179 

Cheshunt  College,  38,  149 
Chesterton,  Mr.  G.  K.,  233 
Chicago,  15 1,  200 
Christ  Church,  Oxford,  119 
Christ  Church  (Westminster  Bridge 
Road),  73 

Christian  World,  The,  51,  52,  58, 
73^  94^  98,  121,  151,  170, 

185 

Christopher,  Canon,  no 
Church  Missionary  Society,  The, 

147 

Church  of  England  {see  Anglican 
Church) 

Churchill,  Mr.  Winston,  243 
City  Road  Chapel,  174 
City  Temple,  The,  70,  119,  1^0,  123, 
125,  126,  127 

Clifford,  Dr.  John,  91-94,  120,  127, 
i73>  174 

Clynes,  Mr.  John  R.,  26 
CoUier,  Rev.  Saimuel  T.,  64 
Compton-Rickett,  Sir  Joseph,  224 
Congregational  Union,  24,  36,  68, 
122,  131,  143 

Contemforary  Review,  The,  241, 
242 

Cooke,  “  Jack,”  206 
Copenhagen,  100 
Crawford,  Mr.  Dan,  81 
Cripps,  Mr.  C.  A.  (Lord  Parmoor), 
12,  13 

Crook,  Mr.  W.  M.,  34-35 


D 

“  Daily  Chronicle,”  The,  14 
Daily  Mail,  The,  9,  22,  12 1 
Daily  News,  The,  87,  143 
Dale,  Dr.  R.  W.,  3,  36,  40,  43,  143, 
176 

Damien,  Father,  150 
Davitt,  Mr.  Michael,  19 


Depew,  Mr.  Chauncey,  200 
Devonshire,  Duke  'of,  17,  135 
Dickens,  Charles,  226 
Dickens,  Sir  Henry  F.,  185 
Disraeli,  Benjamin,  245 
Donald,  Dr.  Robert,  214 
Downing  Street  Breakfast,  98-99, 
144 

Doyle,  Sir  Arthur  Conan,  117 
Drummond,  Prof.  Henry,  loo-ioi 
Du  Bois,  Mr.  W.  E.  B.,  195 


E 

Eccles,  Miss  O’Connor,  133 
Echo,  The,  9,  34 
Edinburgh,  loo 

Edinburgh  World  Missionary  Con¬ 
ference,  1 41,  142 

Education  Acts  (1901),  41,  51,  95, 

183 

Edwards,  Mr.  J.  Hugh,  239 
Eliot,  George,  2,  161,  162 
Ellis,  Mr.  Thomas,  21 
Evening  News,  The,  9 


F 

Fairbairn,  Dr.  A.  M.,  17,  122,  181- 
184 

Falconer,  Mr.,  29 
Fancett,  Mr.  William,  245,  246 
Farrar,  Dean,  169 
Fawcett,  Miss  M.  Garrett,  133 
Fear  of  God,  Decline  of,  2 
Fearnley  Lecture,  The,  i6i,  162 
Fifth  Avenue  Presbyterian  Church 
(New  York),  104 
Fisher  Education  Act,  10 
Fleet  Street,  7,  133,  134,  164 
Forbes  Robertson,  Sir  J.,  198 
Forsyth,  Dr.  P.  T.,  66,  87,  122, 
128-132,  172 
Fountain,  The,  68 
Fowler,  Mr.  H.  H.  (Lord  Wolver¬ 
hampton),  20 

Free  Church  Candidates  at  1906 
Eleotion,  51 

Free  Church  Fellowship,  105 


Index 


249 


Free  St.  George’s  Church,  Edin¬ 
burgh,  123 

Friday  Street,  241,  244 
Friederichs,  Miss  Hulda,  137 
Friend,  Rev,  Walter,  6 
Fry,  Mr,  Charles  B.,  34 
Furley,  Miss  Catharine  Grant,  133 


G 

Gaiety  Theatre,  The,  237,  238 
Gardiner,  Mr.  A.  G.,  87 
Garvie,  Dr.  A,  E.,  114 
Geake,  Mr.  Charles,  21 
George,  Mr.  Lloyd,  18,  29,  41,  61, 
93,  95-99  (chapter  on),  169,  233 
Gibbon,  Mr.  Percival,  8 
Gibson,  Dr.  Monro,  89 
Gilbert  and  Sullivan  O^peras,  89 
Gipsy  Smith,  174,  211-212 
Glover,  Dr.  Reaveley,  66,  143 
Goaribari,  149 
Gordon,  Dr.  George  A.,  152 
Gore,  Bishop,  123,  127 
Gladstone,  Mr.  Herbert,  51 
Gladstone,  W.  E.,  16,  44,  61 
Goldsmith,  Oliver,  7 
Grace,  W,  G.,  Collaborating  with, 

31-35 

Graham,  Stephen,  205 
Grand  Theatre,  Islington,  168 
Greenwood,  Sir  Hamar,  233 
Grenfell,  Dr.  Wilfred  T.,  145,  146, 
147 

Grein,  Henry  Louis,  14 
Grindelwald,  in 

Grindelwald  Reunion  Conferences, 

77 

Grubb,  Mr.  Arthur  P.,  63 
Gurney,  Mrs.  Russell,  177,  180 


H 

Hackney  College,  79,  131 
Haldane,  Lord,  146 
Hall,  Dr.  Newman,  45,  73 
Hankey,  Mr.  Donald,  207 
Harcourt,  Sir  William,  16,  45 
Hardie,  Mr.  Keir,  24,  25 


Harland  and  Wolff,  Messrs.,  166 
Harley,  Mr.  Robert,  116 
Plarmsworth,  Mr.  Alfred  {see  Lord 
N  orthcliff  e) 

Harnack,  Prof,  von,  174 
Harris,  Mr.  John  H.,  195 
Harrison,  Mr.  Frederic,  164 
Harvard  University,  133 
Harvey,  Sir  Martin,  198 
Haworth,  Sir  Henry,  240 
Henderson,  Mr.  Arthur,  25 
Henson,  Dr.  Hensley,  233 
He  wart.  Lord,  8 
Higher  Criticism,  The,  102,  173 
Hinton,  Mr.  James,  232 
Hobbes,  John  Oliver  (Mrs. 
Craig ie),  69 

Hocking,  Mr.  Silas  K.,  81 
Holloway,  Sir  Henry,  212 
Hollo  well.  Rev.  J.  Hirst,  233 
Holmes,  Mr.  J.  Stanley,  M.P.,  85 
Holmes,  Oliver  WendeU,  232 
Hooke,  Dr.  Burford,  21,  37,  38,  39, 
70 

Horder,  Rev.  W.  Garrett,  4 
Horne,  Rev.  C.  Silvester,  42,  49-56, 
58,  87,  96,  140,  146,  210,  212, 

233 

Horton,  Dr.  R.  F.,  127,  186,  215, 

233 

Hos-pital,  The,  134 
Hough,  Dr.  Lynn  Harold,  154, 
176 

House  of  Commons,  The,  10,  12, 
16,  20,  53,  55,  56,  103,  104,  200, 
219 

Housman,  Mr.  Laurence,  232 
Hughes,  Rev.  Hugh  Price,  60-64, 
78,  159-160 

Hughes,  Mr.  Spencer  Leigh,  199- 
200 

Hunter,  Dr.  John,  172.  186 
Hutchinson,  Dr.  Woods,  232 
Hutton,  Dr.  John  A.,  174 

1 

“  iNDEPRNnENT  AND  NONCONFORM¬ 
IST,”  The,  37,  42,  46,  49,  70, 
129,  191,  192 


250 


Index 


Inge,  Dean,  3,  107 
International  Congregational  Coun¬ 
cil,  36,  151,  153,  213 
Irish  Home  Rule,  61,  120 
Irving,  Sir  Henry,  168 


J 

Jarvis,  Rev.  Arthur,  90 
Jetfs,  Mr.  Harry,  126,  201-202 
Jerome,  Mr.  Jerome  K.,  197 
Jones,  Dr.  Griffith,  214 
Jones,  Mr.  Haydn,  96 
Jones,  Dr.  J.  D.,  96,  188 
Jones,  Mr.  Kennedy,  9 
Jones,  Sam,  206 

Jowett,  Dr.  J.  H.,  53,  77,  100-4 
(chapter  on),  174,  189,  207,  233 


K 

Kaiser  Wilhelm  II,  67,  99 
Kensington  Chapel,  49,  55 
Kernahan,  Mr.  Coulson,  31 
King  Edward  VII,  124 
King,  Mr.  Joseph,  183 
King’s  Weigh  House  Church,  36, 
106,  107 

Kinnaird,  Lord,  142 
Klondike,  15 1 
Kwato,  145,  148 


L 

Labour  Party,  The,  24-25,  119,  146 
Labrador,  146,  168 
Lachine  Rapids,  167 
Lady  Writers’  Club,  136 
Lamb,  Charles,  157 
Langton,  Stephan,  241 
Law,  Rev.  Thomas,  52,  96,  97,  210, 
212,  222-225 

Lees  Raper  Lecture,  239 
Leicester  Controversy,  The,  173 
Leno,  Dan,  226,  227 
Leverhulme,  Lord,  no 
Lewes,  George  Henry,  161-162 


Liberal  Party,  The,  200 
Liberation  Society,  The,  225 
Lidgett,  Dr.  J.  Scott,  241 
Lillywhite,  James,  116 
Lincoln,  Abraham,  66,  154 
Liturgy  in  Free  Churches,  175 
Livingstone,  David,  87,  146 
Llandrindod  Wells,  96 
Lo'bb,  Mr.  John,  68,  226 
Lodge,  Sir  Oliver,  3,  13 1 
Lohmann,  George,  31 
London,  Bishop  of,  91,  123 
London  Board  of  Congregational 
Ministers,  120 

London  Missionary  Society,  The, 
83>  i_45>  i47>  203 

London  Opinion,  214 
London  School  Board,  135 
Lowe,  Miss  L.,  197 
Lowell,  James  Russell,  157 
Lunn,  Sir  Henry,  78 
Lutterworth,  14 


M 

MacCunn,  Mr.  Hamish,  85,  86,  88, 
89 

Mackennal,  Dr.  Alexander,  222 
Mackenzie,  Mr.  F.  A.,  121 
Macnamara,  Dr.  T.  J.,  46 
McArthur,  Miss  Mary,  218 
McKenna,  Mr.  Reginald,  53 
McLaren,  Dr.  Alexander,  74,  234 
McNeill,  Rev.  John,  216,  217 
Maidstone,  245,  246 
Manchester  Central  Mission,  64 
Manchester  Examiner ,  The,  i,  31, 

36,  88,  133.  134 

Manchester  Guardian,  The,  50 
Mansfield  College,  152,  181,  184, 
186 

Marconi  Committee,  The,  29 
Martin,  Rev.  Samuel,  115 
Mathews,  Mr.  Basil,  184,  201-203 
May,  Phil,  7 

Mearns,  Rev.  Andrew,  241 
Memorial  Hall,  The,  36 
Meredith,  George,  166 
Merlin,  Rev.  F.  W.  J.,  216 


Index 


251 


M eihodisi  Times,  The,  59,  62 
Metropolitan  Tabernacle,  i 
Meyer,  Dr.  F.  B.,  210 
Miall,  Mr.  Charles  S.,  39,  40 
Miall,  Edward,  39 
Mill  Hill  School,  115 
Mischievous  Goodness,  232 
Moody,  Mr.  D.  L.,  54,  145,  206, 
210 

Morgan,  Dr.  G.  Campbell,  87,  131, 
189,  210 

Morley,  Mr.  John  (Lord),  114 
Morten,  Miss  Honnor,  134-136 
Moss,  Mr.  Hugh,  85,  89 
Mott,  Dr.  John,  142 
Mottram,  Rev.  William,  161 
Murray,  Mr.  Donald,  243 
Murray,  Sir  James,  116 

N 

National  Free  Church  Council, 
52,  62,  77,  97,  130,  212,  223, 
224 

National  Liberal  Club,  58,  200,  243 
New  College  (Hampstead),  108, 
109 

New  Old  South  Church,  Boston, 
Mass.,  152 

New  Theology  Controversy,  106, 
119,  120,  121 
New  York,  103 
New  York  Herald,  The,  113 
Newcastle-on-Tyne,  26,  loi 
Newfoundland,  168 
Newman,  John  Henry,  123 
Newnes,  Sir  George,  59 
Newnham,  133 
Newton  Hall,  164 
Niagara,  56,  167 
Nicoll,  Sir  Wm.  Robertson,  120 
Nietzsche,  161 

Nonconformist  Conscience,  The,  61, 
144 

Nonconformists  and  the  Stage, 

85 

Nonconformity  and  Liberalism,  41 
Northcliffe,  Lord,  9,  98 
Norway,  168 


O 

O’Connor^  Mr.  T.  P.,  9 
Old  Age  Pensions,  28 
Orchard,  Dr.  W.  E.,  61,  105,  106, 
107,  189,  234 
Ox,enham,  Mr.  John,  85 

Orient  in  London,”  The,  85-90 
Outward  Bound,  203 
Oxford,  181,  185 


P 

Page,  Dr.  Walter  Hines,  118 
Pageant  of  Darkness  and  Light, 
The,  85-90 

Pall  Mall  Gazette,  The,  137 
Palmerston,  Lord,  no 
Papua  (New  Guinea),  83,  148 
Paris,  212 

Parker,  Dr.  Joseph  (chapter  on), 
66-72,  125,  174,  189,  233 
Parnell,  Charles  Stewart,  60,  61 
Passive  Resistance,  184 
Passing  of  the  Third  Floor  Back, 
The,  197 

Patmore,  Coventry,  13 1 
Patten,  Rev.  J.  A.,  213 
Peabody,  F.  G.,  152 
Perowne,  Dr.  (Bishop  of  Wor¬ 
cester),  78 

Phelps,  Samuel,  168 

Philpotts,  Mr.  Eden,  8 

Picton,  Mr.  J.  Allenson,  172 

Pigott,  Richard,  29 

Plagiarism,  190 

Plymouth  Rock,  154 

Pollard,  Rev,  Sam,  145,  147 

Pope,  Mr.  Samuel,  12,  13 

Pope,  The,  120 

Porritt,  Edward,  133 

Port  Sunlight,  in 

Powell,  Rev.  E.  P.,  215 

Press  Association,  The,  7 

Press  Golfing  Society,  The,  214 

Primitive  Methodist  Church,  139 

Pringle,  Rev.  Arthur,  122 

Protestant  Dissenting  Deputies,  228 

Pryce,  Dr.  Vaughan,  67 

Punch,  7,  115,  118 


252 


Index 


R 

Raju,  Prof.,  196 
Ranjitsinhji,  Prince,  34 
Religious  Liberty,  Struggle  for,  28 
Reunion  of  the  Churches,  The, 
140 

Review  of  Reviews,  The,  59 
Reynolds,  Dr.  Henry  R.,  38 
Riddell,  Lord,  214 
Ritchie,  Dr.  D.  L.,  215 
Robins,  Mr.  Raymond,  151 
Rogers,  Dr.  Arthur  G.,  44 
Rogers,  Mr.  Frederick,  28 
Rogers,  Dr.  J.  Guinness,  39,  40,  41, 

42,  143 

Rose,  Dr.  Holland,  197 
Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  179 
Rotherfield,  135,  136 
Rougemont,  Louis  de,  14 
Rousseau,  171,  172 
Rowland,  Dr.  Alfred,  116 
Royden,  Miss  Maude,  141,  218 
Runciman,  Mr.  Walter,  53 
Russell,  Sir  Charles,  29 
Russell,  Rev.  F.  A.,  38 


S 

Sadler's  Wells  Theatre,  168 
St.  James’s  Hall  Conferences,  61 
Sainte  Beuve,  233 
Salisbury,  Lord,  17,  228 
Salvation  Army,  The,  193 
Samoa,  149,  150 
Sayers,  Tom,  116 
Schoolmaster ,  The,  46 
Seaman,  Sir  Owen,  115 
Selbie,  Dr.  W.  B.,  186 
Shakespeare,  Dr.  J.  H.,  99,  169, 
214,  215 

Shaw,  Mr.  Bernard,  25,  127 
Shaw,  Mr.  Norman,  237 
She/pheard,  Mr.  A.  J.,  229 
Shields,  Frederic,  177,  178,  179 
Shorthouse,  J.  H.,  232 
Signal,  The  London,  49 
Simon,  Rev.  Henry,  116 
Simon,  Sir  John,  8,  116 
Snell,  Rev.  Bernard  J.,  108 


Snell,  Rev.  Herbert,  109 
Snowden,  Mrs.  Philip,  218 
Sfectator,  The,  203 
Spencer,  Mr.  Herbert,  29,  39 
Spicer,  Sir  Albert,  29,  30,  93 
Spicer,  Sir  Evan,  93 
Springfield,  Mr.  Lincoln,  214 
Spurgeon,  Charles  H.,  i,  69,  174, 

233 

Stalker,  Dr.  James,  216,  219 
Stanley,  Dean,  131 
Star,  The,  9,  88 

Stead,  Mr.  W.  T.  (chapter  on),  57- 
60,  128 

Steed,  Mr.  Wickham,  115 
Stevenson,  Rev.  J.  G.,  79,  80 
Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  102,  149, 

150 

S  tod  dart.  Miss  Jane  T.,  134 
Stoker,  Mr.  Bram,  168 
Stout,  Mr.  Edwin,  57,  59 
Stronach,  Miss  Alice,  133 
Student  Christian  Movement,  The, 
203 

Sunday,  Rev.  “  Billy,”  205 
Sunday  School  Christianity,  208 
Surrey  Hills,  The,  62,  241,  244 
Sutherland,  Sir  William,  99 
Swanwick  Conference,  105 
Synoptic  Gospel  Christians,  172 


T 

Talmage,  Rev.  De  Witt,  113 
Temple,  The,  157 
T em'ple  Magazine,  The,  74 
“  Thinking  Black,'"  82 
Thomas,  Mr.  James  H.,  26 
Thompson,  Mr.  Francis  Seton,  82 
Times,  The,  115,  143 
Tipple,  Rev.  Samuel  A.,  4,  5,  6 
Todhunter,  Dr.,  116 
Toronto,  56 

Torrey  -  Alexander  Mission,  58, 
205 

Tremont  Temple,  Boston,  155 
Tribune,  The,  50 

Tyranny  of  the  Cheque  Book,  The, 

139 


Index 


253 


u 

United  Methodist  Church^  147 

V 

Vailima,  150 

W 

Wallace,  Mr.  Edgar,  8 
Wallas,  Mr.  Graham,  135 
Warrington,  iii 
Washington,  153,  185 
Washington,  Booker,  117,  118,  194 
Watkinson,  Dr.  W.  L.,  158-163 
Watson,  Dr.  John,  114,  152 
Webster,  Sir  Richard  (Lord  Alver- 
stone),  II 

Welldon,  Bishop,  116 
Wells,  Mr.  H.  G.,  242 
Wells,  Rev.  R.  J.,  215 
Welsh  Revolt,  The,  95 
West  London  Mission,  63 


Western  Civilization,  82,  83 
Westminster  Chapel,  115 
Westminster  Gazette,  The,  137 
Whitefieldis  (Central  Mission),  49, 
53,  58,  140 

Whitefriars  Club,  135 
Wide  World  Magazine,  The,  14 
Wilde,  Oscar,  167 
Willard,  Miss  Frances,  218 
Williams,  Mr.  J.  Carvell,  225 
Williams,  Rev.  T.  Rhondda,  122 
Windsor  Castle  Chapel,  124 
Women  Preachers,  218 
World,  The,  119 
World^s  Work,  The,  118 


Y 

Yale,  206 

Yates,  Rev.  Thomas,  81,  189 
Young,  Rev.  Dinsdale  T. ,  112 
Yunnan  (China),  147 


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